


Lifeline

by AuroraBee



Series: The Ghost and the Darkness [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-02-17 19:05:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2320142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraBee/pseuds/AuroraBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>May’s capture while on a tech recovery mission in Malaysia leads to the discovery of a new threat during a high-risk rescue operation by Maria Hill and Clint Barton, but why would the threat target May, and what reasons does Maria Hill have for being involved?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AU from somewhere during the season one finale and onwards. Later fics in the series may have higher ratings and secondary pairings that may not be of the femmeslash variety.

_Two Weeks Ago, Singapore_

 

 _“I don’t feel comfortable taking Skye on this operation,”_ May had told him, as soon as she had learned of what Coulson had planned for the intel they’d received.

 

Alien technology in Singapore. “Easy,” Coulson had said, with a shrug, and May had given him a look that told him that she knew better. She could read his body language, and she knew better.

 

Still, her words hadn’t stopped Coulson from sending them both in, and as they walked through the Civics District, Skye commed back, “Okay, we’re passing the obelisk. Fitz are you reading anything yet?”

 

“Not yet.” Fitz had that distracted sound that meant he was working, and as they waited, both knew that Skye would have been the faster one on the computer. Skye watched May roll her eyes. “Okay, take a left up at that next building.”

 

It was the middle of the day. They had considered doing the mission at night, except that was when May said they would expect someone to come. “Who is expecting S.H.I.E.L.D. at this point?” Fitz had asked.

 

May had almost voiced what Skye said next. “Maybe they’re expecting H.Y.D.R.A.”

 

A.I.M. even, May knew, but she figured Skye had enough to catch up on lately, and A.I.M. had spent most of their recent time staying off the radar.

 

They walked quickly, dressed in civilian business attire, which relieved Skye, because she was pretty sure if she walked somewhere dressed in normal clothes with May, people might assume that May was her mom, and life with May was hard enough without having to pull that particular undercover stunt off. She tried to picture smiling, saying daughterly things to May, getting scolded, and the thought alone made Skye frown.

 

“Keep your head in the game,” May told her, and Skye nodded to herself. Yeah, maybe May wouldn’t have any problem playing the mom.

 

Skye put her serious face on so that May knew she was being serious as they followed Fitz’s instructions into Padang. She could feel the gun tucked in behind her, but the gun made her more nervous. Ever since Ward, she’d questioned what she learned from him about being in the field, whether she’d inherited something from him and Garrett, some tactical ruthlessness that she hadn’t been able to root out yet.

 

She should have taken May’s offer, gotten up early, trained with her, but sometimes Skye looked at May and wasn’t sure that was the direction she wanted to go in either. Maybe she’d be like Coulson. Besides the dying thing, he seemed okay. His morals seemed sound enough. Even Fury seemed to trust him, and that guy didn’t seem like he’d trust his own puppy not to be bugged, or a robot, or a bugged robot. He’d probably shoot it just to be sure.

 

“Skye,” May hissed again, pulling Skye back out of her thoughts to focus on the office building in front of them.

 

“There, that building directly in front of you,” Fitz said, if on cue.

 

“Okay, so do we just walk in then?” Skye asked.

 

May didn’t even look in Skye’s direction as she said, “Unless you brought the jetpacks.” Then she moved forward.

 

Was that a joke? “Ha ha ha,” Skye muttered to herself as she followed May. Inside the building a lot of people moved about, waiting for elevators, checking in with the secretary in the front.

 

“Okay, there is a service elevator. You should be able to find it if you walk to the back of the main lobby and go down a hallway to the right,” Fitz said.

 

This was not a covert mission. Skye told herself that one more time. They had been contacted by a Dr. Lim in the first place, a bioengineer who stated that she was not comfortable with the way her coworkers might use such technology. She’d worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. before, got in touch with one of her old contacts, who happened to be one of Simmons old friends from the academy.

 

“If they were H.Y.D.R.A.,” Coulson had said, “they wouldn’t be calling us about the technology, they’d be taking it for themselves.”

 

That sounded logical enough, and how dangerous could it be, going to talk to some lady who actually _wanted_ their help for a change?

 

Still, couldn’t Dr. Lim have wanted to meet in a coffee shop? The service elevator was dingy and remote, looked completely different from the polished lobby they had just passed through.

 

May pressed the button to go down, into the basement. Dr. Lim had assured them no one would be there but her. “It’s lunch,” she’d said. “Everyone expects the alarms to take care of it, but I can disarm them.”

 

“We haven’t had a contact before, really,” Skye said as the elevator doors closed on them, and she watched the numbers change red in descending order towards B5. What said secret hidden science laboratory more than multiple basements?

 

“We used to, back when we worked at the main headquarters,” May said. “But now people don’t trust S.H.I.E.L.D.”

 

“Someone obviously does.”

 

“We’ll see.”

 

The doors opened into a small clear space before a thick transparent wall with a door that had a keypad. The serious kind of keypad that had optical recognition and voice features. Dr. Lim opened the door from the other side, and Skye noticed May tensed when she saw the other woman. There was no time to ask about it. Dr. Lim smiled. “Follow me, it’s right this way.”

 

Skye was about to move forward when May put her arm out. “Skye, get back in the elevator.”

 

“What? But May—“

 

“Get back in the elevator,” May barked, so harshly that Skye took a step back. While she was still trying to assess the situation, May turned on her. “Look, it might be nothing,” she said low enough so only Skye could hear, “but if it is not nothing, you’ll do more good for me outside of this basement.”

 

Skye nodded finally. She glanced at Dr. Lim, who was waiting patiently, seemingly unsurprised that the two of them were whispering with each other. Skye felt a hard knot forming in her stomach. Making the decision, she got back in the elevator, pressing the lobby button, immediately trying to contact Fitz. The communications were dead. It might be from being so low underground, but Skye had a bad feeling it was more than that.

 

 _Come on,_ Skye thought at the elevator, relief flooding through her when it finally opened up back to the lobby. She slipped back against the wall. “Fitz can you hear me?”

 

“Yeah, what’s going on?”

 

Skye took a deep breath, tried telling herself there was nothing wrong, that May was only being overly cautious. “May went in alone. She took one look at Dr. Lim and told me to get back on the elevator.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

“She said I’d be more use to her if I weren’t trapped in the basement,” Skye said, realizing that May had no way to communicate with her.

 

“Skye, this is Coulson. I want you to listen to me carefully.”

 

“Okay, I’m listening.”

 

“I want you to get out of that building,” he said. Great, all anyone could tell her to do was retreat, but the firmness of his voice, that urgent tone he got when he was trying not to sound urgent at all, told Skye it wasn’t time to argue.

 

She strolled casually back towards the main entrance, noticing out of the corner of her eyes the security guards moving in her general direction. She tried weaving between a few people, watching them to see if they were drawing their weapons, but it wasn’t until she was almost to the exit that they picked up their pace at all.

 

“Not yet. Not yet,” Skye whispered to herself over and over again, a mantra to try to keep her concentrated on what she needed to do. They were only a breath behind her when Skye heard a clicking and looked down to see something metal rolling across the floor to her left. It stopped, opening up and releasing a cloud of gas.

 

“Okay, Skye, now run,” Coulson said, and it didn’t take more urging than that for Skye to bolt out the door.

 

She raced down the steps to the building, noticing when she was almost at the bottom that one guard had gotten out of the building with his gun drawn. He shot at her, and she barely dodged it.

 

She jumped down sideways off the stairs down into the grass, a few shrubs blocking his view of her as she kept her shoulder against the building and crept around to the street running along the other side. Leaving the building, she slipped casually into the closest crowd of people, trying to glance behind her without being obvious. Fitz said into her ear, “The nearest subway line is only half a mile to your south. If you can get there, you can probably lose them.”

 

She changed directions, dismayed to see it brought her back past the entrance of the building she’d just left. Skye tried to keep her face down, hair falling partly over her face, but one of the guards was standing, surveying the crowd. She couldn’t see the other one.

 

Then he said something into an earpiece before making his way in her direction again. She tried walking faster, but he was quickly catching up.

 

When she looked back again his buddy was approaching her from her left, trying to meet her at the next intersection.

 

They were starting to converge on her when she noticed the subway station. Skye pushed someone back towards the guard behind her and took off running for the station entrance. A couple of surprised screams made her look back where the second guard had drawn his weapon again and was aiming it right at her.

 

She closed her eyes instinctively, still running, not sure there was any way to avoid what was about to happen. Two shots rang out. Skye stopped. There was no pain. Squinting one eye open, she saw the two security guards on the ground. There was a rough hand on her shoulder, and she jumped, settling when she noticed it was Trip. He shoved her towards the subway. “Come on, the police will come, and they might have friends.”

 

The hand he kept on her back to keep them together in the crowded station was comforting after everything that had happened. They made their way through the people moving both away and towards the platform, slipping into a train as it pulled into the station. Trip relaxed slightly after the door had closed, and he’d surveyed the subway car. As the train lurched forward, his hand left her back, but he kept glancing around.

 

It wasn’t rush hour, so the train wasn’t fully packed, but there were quite a few people to watch. Standing still, her breathing returning to normal, Skye had time for everything to sink in. “We left her back there.”

 

“There was no choice,” Trip said.

 

“There was a choice, I could have stayed, I could have--”

 

“What, gotten taken with her?” he asked, turning to look at her.

 

Skye looked at her feet. “It was obviously a trap.” She messed with her thumbnail. Her gun was still on her back. She hadn’t even drawn it. “I guess there’s no chance she’s going to make her way out?”

 

“With Agent May, who knows,” Trip said.

 

Skye nodded her head, though the words gave her no relief. “Yeah, who knows.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

The rest of the trip was uneventful, though it took almost two hours for Trip and Skye to navigate back to the Bus. Skye hoped to see May onboard when she got there, but the looks on the rest of the team's faces told her that May had never made it.

 

Skye made herself look Coulson in the eye. “So what’s the plan for going after her?”

 

He sighed. “Right now, I don’t know, Skye.”

 

“What do you mean you don’t know?” she asked. “Maybe she’s still in the building, and we have Trip, and we have…” She paused and looked around at Coulson, Fitz, and Simmons, who were standing waiting for her to finish. “… guns and stuff.”

 

Coulson stepped forward. He rested his hand on her shoulder. “Look, Skye, we’re going to make a plan, and we’re going to get her back, but we don’t have S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore. There’s no backup, there is only the five of us, and we don’t even know where she is right now. From what Fitz can tell, the basement was empty by the time you were on the subway.”

 

Skye shrugged off his hand. “We shouldn’t have gone in. You’re right, we’re not S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore, and we shouldn’t act like it.” She knew she was being childish, but she tore herself away from his hand and stomped off to her room. When she got there, she curled up on her bed, arms around her knees.

 

When she heard someone knock, she expected to see Coulson, but instead Trip stood in her doorway. “Can I come in?”

 

She nodded.

 

Trip entered the room. He walked to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “What happened out there today, it wasn’t your fault.”

 

Skye didn’t move, keeping her eyes forward instead of looking at Trip. “In the field I’m useless. With computers and everything, I know what I’m doing, I know I can help, but…” She sucked in her breath, then let it back out. “I’m not Ward. They should have sent you in.”

 

“For starters, Ward was a H.Y.D.R.A. piece of trash, and you should be glad you’re not like him. And secondly, there was nothing you could have done. May knew what she was doing better than anyone, and I’m not sure that I could have done anything for her. Coulson sent you. I’m sure he had a reason for that. You just have to trust him.”

 

She looked up at him. “Do you trust him? Considering everything with Garrett?”

 

“If I was never going to trust anyone again, I wouldn’t be on this team. You can’t have a team without trust, and if I’m wrong, I’ll deal with that when it happens.”

 

Skye nodded, resting her chin on the tops of her knees again. “I think I need a new S.O. May sort of offered, once, but I never took her up on it. Maybe it was too soon after Ward, I don’t know.”

 

“Well, if you feel like you still need some training, I’d always be up for showing you the ropes.”

 

She nodded again. “I don’t want today to happen again.”

 

“In this line of work, days like today are always going to happen.” Trip looked away from her. “And sometimes, yes, you will carry it with you.”

 

Skye let his words sink in, but part of her rebelled against them. Their team had always managed to pull through, had always managed to get everyone out, to save the day, and now it really did feel like everything had fallen apart. They weren’t part of a whole organization, they were five people against the world, and what could five people do?

 

“I’m going to let you get some rest,” Trip told her, getting up from the bed.

 

“Hey,” she said, and he turned and paused. “Thanks.” She offered him a smile.

 

“Anytime.”

 

“And Trip?”

 

He looked back and waited.

 

“Just… tell me we’re going to get her back.”

 

Trip hesitated, but then he nodded. “I’m going to do whatever I can.”

 

Skye nodded, knowing that was all she could expect. “Me too,” she said. Whatever it took.

 

_Three Weeks Ago, aboard the Bus over international air space_

 

“It doesn’t make sense.” May said after Coulson informed her about the intel coming out of Singapore.

 

Coulson considered May’s words, crossed his arms. “So what do you propose we do about the situation?”

 

“Nothing.” She turned to look directly at him. “We have to operate differently. We’re not an organization anymore, Coulson. There’s no more backup, and sometimes we’re going to have to--”

 

“We’re going to have to, what? Let technology fall into the wrong hands? Let people with special abilities fall to the wayside or worse be found by people who would exploit them? We have a job, May. Backup or no backup, this is what we signed on for.”

 

“I didn’t sign on for this.”

 

Coulson sighed. “And if I’m asking you to do this with us?”

 

May looked away from him and breathed out her nose. “How are we planning to approach this?”

 

“It should be simple.”

 

“Until it isn’t.”

 

He gave her a smile. “Are you always this pessimistic?”

 

“Here I was pretty sure that you weren’t that naïve.” May crossed her arms. “Let’s say she is who she says she is. Let’s say it isn’t a trap. Who are you sending in?”

 

“You.” He paused, seemed to consider his options for a moment. “You and Skye.”

 

She raised an eyebrow. “Skye. You’re serious?”

 

“Ward and Fitz went through something much harder than this, and if anything Skye has better training in the field than Fitz.”

 

“I’m not Ward.” Her mouth was a tight line, and then she said, “And Trip?”

 

“He stays on the Bus in the case you do need backup.”

 

“If there’s a situation that I can’t handle, Coulson, one agent isn’t going to be able to fix that.” She turned towards the wall, away from Coulson, then turned back. “Let me go in alone.”

 

“Not going to happen.” Coulson took a step towards her. “You can’t protect everyone. I know we lost Ward, and I know that, despite what you want to say now, it made it easier to have someone who would do whatever it would take. Trip is a good agent, but we don’t know him yet, we don’t know what he’s capable of, and that’s why I want Skye to go in with you. You trust her. You’ve both worked together before.”

 

She snorted.

 

Later when they’d gone over the details of the plans, May had made sure to say that she didn’t feel comfortable taking Skye on the operation.

 

“You don’t have to,” Coulson told her, “but this is what I’m doing, with or without you. We’ve done this before. It will be easy. A piece of cake.”

 

She focused on him, studying his face. “Tell me why it’s so important.”

 

Coulson was quiet. He looked up at her. “Can you trust me, on this one, that I have legitimate reasons for wanting this particular piece of technology?”

 

“Now you sound like Fury.”

 

Coulson shook his head. “No secret files, just something I want to figure out for myself first.”

 

“They thought they were justified too,” May told him. “I’ll go. I’m the one that decided to be part of this team, but if something happens, the first thing I’m going to do is get her out of there.”

 

“That’s fine.” Coulson leaned back against his desk, hands on the edges. “I’ll play this however you want to play this.”

 

“But you call the shots.”

 

He gave her one nod. “But I call the shots.”

 

\---

 

After they had briefed the rest of the team on the operation, May had pulled Trip to the side. “Can I trust you?”

 

“Do you mean am I going to turn out like Ward?” he asked.

 

“No, I mean, if I tell you to do something, can I trust that you’ll do it?” She had backed him almost to the wall, and Trip could recognize intimidation when he saw it.

 

He kept his voice casual. “Depends on what it is, but sure. If it’s reasonable, you can trust me.”

 

She searched his face, and finding something that satisfied her, May said, “I have a bad feeling about what we’re about to do, but Coulson is going ahead with it. What that means is I want to make sure if something happens to me, that you won’t let the team go on some kind of suicide mission to try to get me back. Do you understand?”

 

“Wait, what exactly do you think is going to happen?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he took her wrist. “Look, Agent May, if you’re going to ask me for something like that, I need to know the reason why.”

 

She tried staring him down, but he refused to be the one to turn away first. Finally May spoke. “There are a few reasons, and it’s nothing definite. Something about this feels wrong to me. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but there are dangerous operations in Asia, and a good number of them are in Malaysia. I’m willing to put myself on the line for Coulson, because this is important to him, but I’m not going to let him put the whole team in danger. So can you promise me that you won’t let that happen?”

 

“I promise you that I’ll do whatever I can to keep the team safe.” He let her go. “And that’s all I’m going to promise you. But if it’s true that the only way to save you is a suicide mission, then no, I’m not going to go along with it.”

 

“Thank you,” she said, rubbing her wrist. Nothing about her expression was friendly. Not much about this woman ever was, Trip was starting to find out, but he’d heard the stories. The Calvary. Maybe if he had to live with a reputation like that, maybe if he were capable of some of the things that she had to be capable of, he wouldn’t be very friendly either.

 

_Now, Subic Bay Freeport Zone, the Philippines_

 

They were standing in the command deck, and Trip was shouting, “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to sanction what is basically a suicide mission.”

 

Skye opened her mouth and narrowed her eyes at him. “You’d, what, let May rot? They could be _torturing_ her, do you get that? They could be pulling her teeth out and…”

 

“Cutting off parts of her body,” Fitz added, nodding seriously.

 

“Getting killed with her is a better idea?” Trip asked.

 

“I thought you were with me on this,” Skye said. “I thought you said that we’re going to do whatever it takes--”

 

“And if we die, who saves her then, Skye? Do you think someone else is going to come out of thin air and rescue her? We need to know what we’re doing is going to work. We need to know we’re going to have a decent chance.”

 

“But we do have a decent chance.” Skye looked at Coulson, her eyes slightly wet. “We have a decent chance, right?” Coulson dropped his eyes to the table. “AC?”

 

“Skye…” Coulson shook his head. “We’ve spent weeks, and this is the best plan we’ve come up with, but…”

 

“You’re all giving up on her!” Skye said, pointing at them. Simmons frowned, pointing to herself, and Skye shook her head. “Most of you are giving up on her!”

 

“We’re not giving up on her.” Coulson’s voice was firm. “But Trip is right, if we go in without a good enough plan, there’s not going to be a second chance. We’re all she’s got.”

 

“We don’t even know how long she has left, whether they’re going to keep her alive, or if after she’s not useful, they’ll…” Skye bit her lower lip. “There has to be something we can do.”

 

“There is, and we’re going to figure it out,” Coulson said, though after two weeks of coming up short, he didn’t seem as confident as he once had.

 

“There has to be something.” Simmons said. “I mean, Fitz can make some gadget, and I can make some poison gas, and we can just use that on everyone.”

 

Fitz looked at her. “Like kill them all?”

 

She frowned. “Or maybe just put them to sleep for a while. Maybe poison was not the word I meant to use…”

 

“Is May still…?” Skye asked Fitz.

 

“In the middle of the Malaysian rainforest, yes.” He nodded. “In a pretty wet part of it, too, which means we’d have nowhere in a fifty mile radius to land or take off from. Seeing how many of us know how to pilot this thing very well in the first place, I’d make that closer to seventy miles. There are a lot of trees.”

 

“It’s a rainforest,” Simmons said. “Of course it’s full of trees.”

 

“Yes but there are less dense areas to land in, Jemma.”

 

She rolled her eyes at him.

 

“Yes, it’s a little tough,” Coulson said. “But we can do this, we just need to find the right way to go about it. Until then, we’ve been on this ship for days, and I think we could all use a little fresh air. Clear our heads. Maybe something will come to us that hasn’t yet.”

 

The team reluctantly nodded, especially Skye, who hung back after Fitz and Simmons had left the room, stopping Trip from leaving with an arm. Skye looked at Coulson. “Can you give us a moment to talk?” she asked.

 

He nodded. “Skye, we are going to do everything humanly possible to…” When she held up her hand, he said, “I’ll let the two of you talk.”

 

“I needed you to be on my side,” she told Trip as soon as Coulson was out of earshot.

 

“I am on your side. I’m also on the side of not getting everyone killed. Even if this were a specialized S.H.I.E.L.D. team, we’d be looking at twenty better trained men, loads of resources, and right now we have three agents with limited experience and one airplane.” He sighed, letting his arms fall to his sides. “What do you expect me to do, Skye? Do you think rushing in before we’re ready is really what Agent May would want us to do?”

 

“It’s not what she would do, though.” Skye waved her hand. “She’d go in and save us with her bare hands or something.”

 

“Not even I have the skill level to do that.” He searched her eyes. “I don’t think I’d want to if I could.”

 

“What does that mean?” Skye asked.

 

“It means she’s not a happy person. It means sometimes to get things done you have to do things you aren’t comfortable with, and you do too much of that…” He sighed and looked away. “Look, Skye, I know you care about her. I know you think she’s awesome, and--”

 

“And she’s cold and messed up and sometimes a bit of a hard ass. I get that, but this is about more than May. This is about not abandoning our own. This is about knowing we aren’t going to let each other die.” She crossed her arms. “I don’t care if--”

 

“If you have to die?” he asked, taking her arms. “Because right now that’s what it sounds like.”

 

She frowned and broke herself free. “That’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say I don’t care if we don’t have S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore. I don’t care if we’re not a twenty agent team. We’re going to find a way to save her because we care about her.”

 

He shook his head. “I’m not going to be naïve about this, and you… If you can’t accept loss is part of this business, then you don’t need to be in it.”

 

Skye watched him walk away. Her vision was blurry from the tears she trying not to let fall. She didn’t want to admit how losing Ward had felt like losing someone she had known and cared about, even though it was only to himself, but to actually lose a second person. Especially when it was her fault, because she hadn’t been any help. All she’d been able to do was run away and leave May in that building.

 

Maybe Coulson was right. Maybe she needed to take a step back, get a fresh perspective. “Ward, I almost wish you were here so I could kick your ass,” Skye muttered under her breath. H.Y.D.R.A. or not, he would have gone in to save May. He would have done what needed to be done.

 

Did she have to be like Ward or May to not be weak? Did she have to shut everything out and try not to feel anything?

 

She felt like she should apologize to Trip, but instead Skye promised herself that even if she had to become like that, hard and cold, in order to save May, she’d do it.

 

She glanced back before leaving the command deck, feeling like she was leaving some important part of herself behind in it.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Coulson didn’t feel any relief as he returned to the Bus. He felt weary in a way that the sun and fresh air had done little to touch, and he found himself weighed down by too many thoughts that still offered no solutions.

 

His team was solemn as they made their way back inside behind him, Skye especially. May was right. He’d made the wrong call. Should have listened to her. Whoever it was must have seen them coming, and they’d walked right into the trap.

 

Maybe Fury had been wrong, maybe he wasn’t suited for rebuilding an organization when he could barely keep his team safe. They’d known just what to tempt him with, and maybe, he’d also wanted to prove that they could do it without Ward, without S.H.I.E.L.D. That nothing had changed. It had changed though. Everything had changed, and they were the small players now, barely registering in the bigger picture.

 

He couldn’t blame Skye for wanting to rush in, but he also knew that rushing in was what had put May in harm’s way in the first place.

 

He rubbed his face with one hand as he walked into his office, stopping when he heard a familiar voice say, “I was wondering when you’d get back.”

 

He took his hand away from his face. “I take it you’ve heard then.”

 

Maria Hill took her feet off of his desk. “You should have told me.”

 

She was pissed at him. He wasn’t surprised. “It’s not the way it works between you two.”

 

“Lots of things are changing,” she said.

 

“How’d you find out?”

 

“Natasha’s doing some work in Russia. Heard some things went down, thought I might want to know.”

 

“So Fury told you?” he asked.

 

She was on her feet immediately, hand slamming against the top of his desk. “Dammit, Phil, you should have told me. You should have told me the moment it happened.”

 

He didn’t blink. “It’s not what she would have wanted.”

 

She barked out a laugh, shaking her head. “She’s been out there for two weeks. Are you really going to stand here and tell me you were worried about what she _wanted_? I don’t care what she wants, I’m getting her out of there, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of my way.”

 

“You’re not my superior officer anymore,” he told her.

 

She stopped pacing and gave him a disbelieving look. “This isn’t about rank.”

 

“I know that.”

 

Hill looked towards the floor, calculating. “I called Clint to help out. This is an extraction mission. You know your team can’t do it.” She looked back up. “You know I can.”

 

“Can you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her. “And how are you even here? Isn’t the US government keeping tabs on you?”

 

She crossed her arms and shrugged. “As far as the US government is concerned, I am officially on a camping trip.”

 

Coulson felt slightly impressed despite himself. “How did you pull that one off?”

 

“I’m not officially allowed to tell you. Stark, not S.H.I.E.L.D.”

 

“And how does Stark feel about you being here?”

 

“None of his business.” She held her jaw tightly. “He knows where I am but not why.”

 

“You never change,” Coulson said.

 

“And I’m going to take that as a compliment. So now that this little Q&A is over, I’d appreciate your cooperation.”

 

As much as he wanted to say no, sending Hill away didn’t seem prudent. “Let me sleep on it.”

 

“No time for that, Clint is arriving here in the morning. I’m going to need one of your people to fly a jet. Trip, I was thinking. Nothing too out of the ordinary, so he should be able to handle it.”

 

“Do I get to be let in on this little plan of yours?” Coulson asked. “You know, before I send a member of my team in, or let you go at all, considering a wrong move by you might get her killed.”

 

He’d pissed her off again, he could tell by the way she was holding herself. “Unlike you, Coulson, I still have resources, and more importantly, Clint and I have the training to pull this off, and training is one thing your team sorely lacks. Can I guarantee you that I can get her out of this alive? No, but I can guarantee you if anyone _can_ get her out of this alive, it’s going to be me, and if I don’t get her out alive, I will make sure that everyone involved will pay, in the way that Natasha likes to make people pay. Are we clear? Is that enough for you?”

 

Coulson considered it. “Sounds good to me.”

 

She smiled. “Good. Now I’m going to need all the information you have on what happened, why it happened, and then I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

Maybe the world didn’t change as much as Coulson thought. “I’ll tell Skye to put it on a hard drive.” He was going to move to do just that, but he stopped. “Now that I think about it, I’m not really surprised. I should have expected this.”

 

“Why do you say that?” Hill asked.

 

“Because you were never really over her,” he said. For her part, Hill mostly didn’t react, but there was a slight twitch to her mouth.

 

“I’m just paying back a debt, Coulson. That’s all this is.”

 

In response, he gave her a smile. “I’ll go get that hard drive.”

 

\---

 

“And this,” Fitz said, putting a device in Hill’s hand, “should be able to help you locate her within a distance of two-hundred feet.”

 

“It goes off of her bio-signature,” Simmons added.

 

“And it’s waterproof to resist the effects of weather, considering you’re going to a rainforest,” Fitz finished.

 

Clint Barton stood looking amused at the two of them, but Maria Hill had her eyes on the rising sun outside. She turned to Trip. “You’re going to be waiting for us, which means if something goes wrong, you’re going to be our only source of backup on the island. Did you go over the details I sent you last night?”

 

“Don’t worry, I can handle this,” he told her.

 

“Is there anything I can do?” Skye asked.

 

“Stay on the Bus, see if you can’t hack into any of the systems that these people have been using, the ones in Singapore or elsewhere. Maybe there’s something we missed that will help us figure out what their game plan was.”

 

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” Skye looked crestfallen, but Maria had turned away from her to look at Coulson.

 

“I don’t know what to say at this point but good luck. Bring her back alive,” he said.

 

She regarded him for a moment. “I’m going to bring her back.”

 

“Good.” He paused. “And Maria?”

 

She raised an eyebrow at him.

 

“Don’t get bitten by any snakes. You remember what happened to Kowalski.”

 

She snorted, shook her head, and turned to Clint. “You ready to go?”

 

He hoisted his arrow bag over his shoulder. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

 

She turned to Trip.

 

“Good to go,” he said.

 

“Then let’s head out.” She gestured to the open loading bay, and the three of them had started to move when Skye put her hand on Hill’s arm.

 

“Are you sure you don’t want help? Wherever you’re going, you’re probably going to need to break into something, and I could…” She shrugged. “I could help with that.”

 

“Thanks, Agent… Skye, but this is already a delicate situation, and the last thing we need is more people to be taken hostage. I’m sorry, but I can’t take you. Stay here. Help with what you’re good at.” She briefly put her hand on Skye’s arm, then let it drop as she followed Clint Barton up into the small jet they’d brought so that they could land in the vicinity where May was being kept.

 

“We should be rescuing her,” Skye said to Coulson as soon as he could hear her over the jet. “She’s one of ours.”

 

Coulson gave her a sympathetic look. “The truth is that Hill had resources that we needed to get May, so it’s her mission now.”

 

“She’s not even in S.H.I.E.L.D. She bailed when it fell apart.”

 

“Be that as it may, I really think if anyone is going to bring May back, it’s going to be her.” Skye looked at him questioningly. He turned towards her. “Let’s go see what we can do from our side. They’re going to need all the help they can get.”

 

Skye sighed as she followed him away from the loading dock.

 

\---

 

“And here Natasha is in a dress that should have gone down to her ankles with this guy locked between her thighs, and her skirt is riding up, and you should have seen the look on Steve’s face, but Tony was just sitting there drinking his bottle of water like he was bored.”

 

Maria rolled her eyes. “Those missions you go on aren’t sanctioned.”

 

“We were just hanging out, and it happened to be near where there was a cell of H.Y.D.R.A. agents,” Clint said with a shrug.

 

“And nowyou sound like Tony.”

 

“You guys really do that?” Trip asked. “I thought the Avengers was a one-time thing.”

 

“It was _officially_ a one-time thing,” Maria interrupted.

 

“Just a bunch of guys hanging out,” Clint said.

 

“Just. Like. Tony.” Maria crossed her arms. “Isn’t it enough I have to see him at work?”

 

“Because Fury was better?” Clint asked.

 

“He certainly didn’t talk as much.”

 

Trip was quiet as he piloted the plane, and then he said, “We’re about to do something dangerous, and we’re joking like nothing is wrong.” The two of them looked at him, and he added, “It reminds me of Garrett, and sometimes I wonder how the rest of us were any different.”

 

That sobered up Hill and Barton slightly. Hill sat back. “I can’t think about the mission that hard,” she said. “I can’t concentrate on it. I just have to get in and do it.”

 

“There’s a reason they took you out of the field,” Clint said. She turned to look at him. “You’re better when you’re removed from the situation.”

 

She looked out the window. “We better hope that’s not true. At least not this time.”

 

Trip glanced over at her, but he didn’t ask as he guided them closer to the island. They’d moved the Bus the night before to a place on Bangka Island that was only a few hundred miles from their destination today, so it hadn’t taken long for them to arrive.

 

“You guys should recruit a black superhero,” Trip said. “I mean Thor and Banner are all right and all, but it’d be nice to see a little diversity.”

 

Hill looked over at Barton.

 

Barton laughed. “Like what, Luke Cage?”

 

“There’s always Black Panther. Or Falcon, though he kind of works with Steve already,” Hill said. She sighed. “God, we could make at least three teams of Avengers.”

 

“Maybe more,” Barton agreed. “If they didn’t kill each other first.”

 

“Sorry I mentioned it in the first place,” Trip said, feeling lost among these names he mostly didn’t know.

 

The three of them sat in silence for a long moment. When Hill spoke again, her voice was different. More like it had been back on the plane. “We should be there in about ten minutes. Barton, I know I don’t need to tell you this, but keep a low profile until we know exactly what we’re dealing with. Agent Triplett, if you happen to get discovered, move to the alternative meeting point, and we’ll try to find you there.”

 

Clint patted her arm. “We’ll get her out, Maria.”

 

“I know.”

 

Trip looked over. “Is there a particular reason you’re here to save Agent May? If you don’t mind me asking?”

 

Clint looked amused, and Hill crossed her arms, looking straight ahead. “I owe her this,” she said.

 

Trip nodded. He more than understood that. He wished there were a way to settle his scores, but unfortunately there were some debts that stayed with you. He found a decent patch of land with enough room to take off again and started closer to the ground.

 

“What if she’s injured?” Barton asked, slinging his arrows back over his shoulder and hopping out of the plane.

 

Hill grabbed a backpack from the back. “We deal with that when we get there.” He shrugged his shoulders as he waited for her to join him.

 

“I’ll just sit in the plane and wait,” Trip said.

 

Hill turned back to him. “If we’re not here by nightfall, get backup.”

 

“Backup. Got it.”

 

He watched them trudge through the thick grass until they had disappeared into the thicker foliage. Maybe he should have brought some magazines.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 “Why is it so wet?” Maria asked as they trudged through another stream.

 

Clint laughed as he followed after her. “It is a rainforest.”

 

“With leeches and lizards as big as dogs.” The heat was oppressive. It wasn’t the heat as much as it was the humidity. She could think of twenty other places she’d rather be. “Why couldn’t they have taken her to Canada?”

 

“Canada?”

 

“I like Canada,” Maria said. “People there are friendly, and they keep to themselves, and they don’t really ask you questions when they find you building something in who cares the fuck where Ontario.”

 

“I hate the cold, so this doesn’t really bother me,” he said. “Beats Natasha dragging me with her to Siberia any day of the week.” He swatted at a mosquito near his arm. “Are we going to talk about why we’re here on a mission unsanctioned by anyone to do what Coulson and his team could have done if you’d just given them the resources?”

 

She stopped long enough to give him an irritated look. “It had already been two weeks.”

 

“Yeah, but you know what I’m saying. I know why you’re here, but then when I stop to think about it, I wonder why _you’re_ here.”

 

“Why not?” she asked turning on him. “I’m not giving orders anymore. I’m not standing on the Helicarrier with thousands of resources at my disposal, and Hand is not here to manage the situation, so for once I am out in the field handling it, and you know what? I used to do this. I know what I’m doing. So maybe you could let me do that?”

 

He held up his hands. “I’m here to help. I just want to make sure, Maria, that you’re not starting something here that you can’t maintain.”

 

That sobered her, and she took a minute before she said, “I know how this works, but…” She shrugged. “I feel responsible.” He looked over at her. “We let H.Y.D.R.A. flourish, and now she’s in danger because of that, and I mean it, if I ever owed her one, it’s this. Right now. Then I’ll go back, and things will be the way they were. I’ll work for Tony. I’ll stay out of it.”

 

“Can you stay out of it?”

 

“It’s been a long time.”

 

He nodded and didn’t say anything more.

 

It took several hours to get to a location where the device Fitz had given her found a reading on May, and when it did they stood at the edge of a huge lake. “Must be broken,” Clint said, squinting into the bright sunlight that was a contrast to the thick foliage they’d been under.

 

Maria surveyed the area, hand on her hip. She shook her head. “I know Coulson’s team. Agent Fitz wouldn’t make a mistake like that. There’s something we’re missing.”

 

“Agent Hill, this is Agent Trip, do you hear me?” There was the crackle of static in her ear with the voice, and she gave Clint a look.

 

“I’m here. Did someone find the jet?”

 

“No, Fitz and Simmons wanted me to relay some information to you. It looks like they might be keeping Agent May somewhere… below ground or maybe even underwater.”

 

“Underwater, you say?” Maria asked, looking back at the lake.

 

“Possibly,” Trip answered back.

 

“Thank you for the information,” she told him. They both looked out at the huge lake. “So…” Maria said. “Do you see anything that looks like it might lead to a submarine or an underground building or…?”

 

“I kind of see a lake,” Clint said.

 

Maria touched her ear. “Agent Triplett, is there any way you could tell Coulson’s team we’re having trouble finding exactly where in this lake we’re supposed to be looking?”

 

\---

“Where in the lake?” Simmons asked Fitz.

 

“Hold on, I’m a scientist, not a bloody race horse,” he said.

 

Skye rolled her eyes and pushed him out of the way. “This is GPS tracking aka one of the things I’m actually good at.”

 

“Who invited her into the lab?” Fitz asked. Simmons gave him a smile and shook her head. He crossed his arms, “And it’s not GPS tracking, it’s--”

 

“Got it!” Skye sat back grinning proudly. “It’s right there in the southwest corner, see.”

 

“It’s finely tuned biological signature tracking,” Fitz finished. He grabbed the laptop and turned it back to himself. “Okay, Agent Triplett, it does indeed seem to be in the southwest corner of the lake.”

 

Fitz turned to them both. “That’s not specific enough, and they need a way in.”

 

Simmons sighs. “This is how it always happens, they go out into the field, they act like they do all the hard work, and who’s doing the hard work? We are, that’s who.”

 

Fitz and Skye nodded. “I need to get in the field,” Skye said, and Simmons frowned at her.

 

“That wasn’t quite the point I was making.”

 

“How are we supposed to know how to get into this?” Fitz asked, gesturing with one hand towards the laptop. “We’re tracing May, not looking at a topographic map of the area.”

 

“But we could be,” Skye said, taking over the laptop again. “One topogromaphic thingy coming up.”

 

“Did she just say…?” Simmons asked Fitz, who nodded somberly.

 

Skye wondered as she worked if Coulson was still in his office. He had been in there looking thoughtful when the three of them had gotten together and told him they needed to do something to help Agent May. He’d checked in on them a few times, but the thing that got to Skye was that he didn’t seem all that upset.

 

It took her a second to find the right satellites to use, satellites were good for so many things, and then she was tapping into the system to get a scan of the area where the lake was. “Who has a base under the water anyways?” she asked. “Isn’t it kind of flashy, like ‘oooh, we have an underground base in a lake’?”

 

“It does hide it from view,” Fitz said.

 

“And it does make escaping from it more difficult,” Simmons added.

 

“Okay, so maybe it’s a little practical too.” Skye scrunched her nose at them. She was trying to feel useful, but it still frustrated her to be on the plane when she could be on the ground contributing to May’s rescue in a more concrete way. There was a voice in her head that kept telling her there was a reason that May sent her away, back in Singapore. She was too much of a liability. Maybe she was more of a tech, sciency person like Fitz or Simmons, but she didn’t want to be. Ward thought she could be a field agent…

 

Before he’d turned out to be H.Y.D.R.A. and killed some people and betrayed them all, but hey, H.Y.D.R.A. didn’t mess around, and so maybe it still meant something that Ward had thought she had potential. “H.Y.D.R.A. is pretty badass, right?” she asked Fitz and Simmons.

 

Fitz looked at Simmons. “Did she just say that?”

 

“Yeah, I… Skye, you do realize that H.Y.D.R.A. is a bad, evil organization, right?”

 

“No, no, that’s not what I meant. What I meant is, they expect their people to kick ass, right? I mean they came from Nazis, so they’re all about the physical superiority and…” She noticed the looks she was getting. “And I’m just going to shut up now.”

 

“If she joins H.Y.D.R.A. I am going home,” Fitz said. “I am going home and working for some place where there are no government agencies involved and my friends won’t turn out to be murderers or Nazis or double agents…” Simmons patted him on the shoulder.

 

“I’m not joining H.Y.D.R.A.,” Skye muttered. “Though maybe they would put me in the field…”

 

Simmons shared another look with Fitz. “Skye, you are very useful,” she said. She waited, then elbowed Fitz.

 

He coughed and nodded. “Very useful. It’s just people like Agent May and Agent Hill...”

 

“They’ve been doing this forever. It’s kind of like breathing to them, kind of like hacking a government database would be to you, and… would you let them do the tech on a mission if you were around to do it better?” she finished.

 

“I guess not.” Skye knew she was still pouting.

 

“So don’t feel bad about it,” Simmons said, offering Skye a smile.

 

Simmons had a point, Skye knew. May probably wouldn’t bother trying to hack something if Skye were around to do it. She had shoved Fitz away from the laptop a second ago…

 

She was looking at the map she had pulled up. She couldn’t make out anything under the surface of the lake, because it was only concerned with the land not any buildings or structure on it, so she could see the bottom of the lake but that wasn’t very helpful.

 

Simmons and Fitz looked at the map over her shoulder. “Right there,” Simmons said.

 

“Must be,” Fitz agreed, nodding his head.

 

“Umm, what are we looking at?” Skye asked.

 

Simmons pointed her finger. “There, you can see that intrusion into the ground.”

 

“Ah, yes,” Fitz said. “It does look rather unnatural.”

 

“Intrusion? You mean hole?” Skye looked at where they were pointing. “If that’s a hole, it’s a big hole.”

 

“Well you would need a big hole, wouldn’t you?” Fitz asked.

 

“For what?” Skye asked.

 

“Ventilation,” Simmons said, matter-of-factly. “People in underwater facilities have to breathe somehow, and you’re hardly going to have an underwater oxygen supply to rely on.”

 

“Hardly,” Skye said. “Okay then, tell Trip we have their entrance point.”

 

Skye was turning to leave when Simmons asked where she was going. “Ah, I just, was going to go check in on AC, see what’s up. Let me know how it goes with May, okay?”

 

“Of course,” Simmons said as Fitz relayed the information to Agent Triplett.

 

\---

 

“Try finding the large hole to the southeast of your position to get into the underwater facility in the southwest corner of the lake… they do know we are in a rainforest, right?” Maria was hacking at some thick foliage, and she glared when she heard Clint laughing at her. “I shouldn’t have to ask for GPS coordinates. How does Coulson train his people anyways?”

 

“It only took them a minute after you asked.”

 

“I shouldn’t have to ask,” she repeated.

 

“Do you want me to climb a tree and see if I can locate it?” he asked.

 

Maria shook her head. “It’s inefficient.” She tried again to stop and listen for any sounds that might give away what they were looking for, but all she heard was the buzz of the insects and the rain that had started coming down on their heads an hour ago.

 

“Well, it can’t be completely covered, if it’s a ventilation system,” he said, dropping to put his hand on the ground. “The rain might actually help.”

 

“Really?” she asked. “Because right now all I’m thinking about is how hard it’s going to be to pull off an extraction in it.”

 

Clint smirked at her. “One thing at a time, Maria.”

 

“Don’t use my name like that.”

 

He looked at her. “You’re really not taking well to your loss of authority. There’s a reason why Stark put you in charge of people.” He got back to his feet. “We need to find a cave.”

 

“Because it has to be protected from the water and out of view. We could be standing right on top of it.” She made a circle looking at the ground before giving Clint a smile. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

 

“I thought it was my good looks.”

 

She gave him a look that said _right_ before contacting Trip. “We need to find the entrance to a cave. It should be around the same area as the ventilation system.” After, she looked at Clint. “Intrusion into the ground, and they couldn’t figure out it was a cave. This is the best the academy could produce?”

 

He laughed again as Agent Trip said, “Okay, we’re sending you the coordinates.”

 

“Five days with them,” Maria told Clint. “Five days. I bet they drive Melinda crazy.” They were walking in the direction of the coordinates they’d been given, and Maria got really quiet.

 

“She’s going to be okay,” he said.

 

Maria shook her head. She frowned as she slapped at another mosquito. “I thought she was going to be down in that basement forever, and now there’s not even a basement to be down in. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s gone. Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you had done something different?”

 

“Duck hunting?” he asked.

 

She hit him on the shoulder, and Clint grew serious. “I don’t know. I don’t think about it anymore. It doesn’t matter to me.”

 

“This is what I was meant for,” she said, and he nodded at the sentiment. “Even if it’s technically just you and I trekking through the Malaysian rainforest.”

 

“On our camping trip, you mean.”

 

“Don’t laugh. We might be sleeping outside.”

 

They both stopped when a second humming started to be clear through the buzz of the insects. “So what’s the plan?” Clint asked.

 

“We go in, we shoot everyone, we take her, we leave,” Maria said without even looking back at him.

 

“ _That’s_ the plan?”

 

“What?” She looked back this time. “It would have been good enough for Fury.”

 

“Because he said it to people like _Natasha_ and _Steve Rodgers_.”

 

“Well, I’m saying it to you.” She rolled her eyes. “We don’t know what the inside of the compound looks like, we don’t know how many people we’re facing, but if it’s a ventilation system, we can roll some sleeping gas down there to take care of the first batch. If we have to carry her out, though, it’s going to be your job.”

 

“Better,” he said. They walked down a slight hill, the humming now strong enough to drown out the sounds of the rainforest. The two of them looked at each other before Maria took out a flashlight and started into the cave.

 

They only had to walk a few feet before they saw it, two turbines that looked like they were about five yards across covering what must have been the ventilation system Coulson’s team had mentioned.

 

As an experiment, Clint picked up a small twig from outside the cave and threw it into one of the turbines, watching as it got shredded to pieces. “What’s your plan for this one?”

 

She unslung the pack she’d carried with her. “Be prepared. Isn’t that the boy scout motto?”

 

“I don’t know. Wasn’t a boy scout.”

 

She chuckled as she pulled out a small round object. “First disable the electricity. It’s only a small one, so it won’t take down the whole facility, but…”

 

“It will stop the turbines.” He nodded, watching as she pressed a button, and a sizzling sound preceded the turbines gradually slowing down.

 

“Okay, keep time, because the longer we take, the more people we’re going to have coming to check this out,” she told him as she pulled out what he recognized as the sleeping gas bomb thing.

 

“What are the official name for those?” he asked.

 

“This?” she asked. Maria shrugged. “The sleeping gas bomb thing?”

 

“Sorry I asked.”

 

She tossed the bomb down into the vent, listening to the hissing release when it landed with a plink against the floor beneath them.

 

They both walked to the edge of the turbines, trying to gauge the distance down, but the shaft was too long to tell. “Better hope it isn’t far from the ceiling to the floor,” Maria said, tying a rope from her pack onto a turbine blade. Clint watched her counting in her head for the gas to have dissipated before she pulled out her gun and slid into the chute backwards, her upper body going first.

 

“How do I always agree to tag along on things like this?” Clint asked as he followed her example.

 

They both stopped before the chute ended, and Maria scoped out the room. There were two guard with guns passed out on the floor, which looked like it was a good ten feet below them. She dropped to her feet, watching as Clint landed beside her.

 

Maria pulled out the device that Fitz had given her. “Looks like it works,” she said, tilting it towards Clint so he could see. “And it says she’s somewhere that way.”

 

They looked at the metal wall, and Clint raised an eyebrow. “Well let’s get going… that way.” The halls were silent except a rhythmic whooshing of air, and Clint glanced at Maria. “Does this feel wrong to you? Secret underwater compound, and we’ve only encountered two people?”

 

“Yeah, it feels wrong,” she said. “But don’t say it. When people say that--”

 

Lights that had been placed along the ceiling began flashing, pulsing a red light bright enough to fill the hallway. They could hear the sound of heavy boots marching towards them.

 

Maria gave him a pointed look. “You had to fucking say it.”

 

“I didn’t know!” Clint said as they broke into a run, weapons at the ready. He launched an arrow at the first soldier they saw.

 

Maria glanced at the body, standard black gear, no patches or symbols anywhere on the outfit. “It’s not clear who they work for.”

 

“Bad guys,” Clint said. “They work for bad guys.”

 

There were five soldiers in the hall now, and Maria shoved her foot into the chest of the first one, so that he stumbled back into a couple of the others. Clint used that opportunity to fire off a few arrows. They took down the last couple of soldiers, then shared a look. “How many more of those are there?” he asked.

 

“Don’t know. We better figure out where she is and get out of here.” Maria squared her shoulders and reloaded before the two of them continued down the corridor.


	5. Chapter 5

Trip kept an eye on the radar and glanced out the window of the jet between flipping through pages of a book about tactical maneuvers. He sighed. Waiting in the jet had always been the worst part of missions. He understood Skye’s impatience to get into the field, where the action was, but he also understood that sometimes you had to be the backup support.

 

Still he smiled when he thought about Skye. She was cute, buoyant, and if she could focus all of that energy, he thought she had potential as a field agent. Not that he couldn’t understand Agent May’s reluctance to have her in high danger situations, but it was a risk all of them took. Even Agent Hand, who hadn’t been in the field, had lost her life in the line of service. It was the job. They had all signed up for it.

 

There was a blip on the radar. Trip watched the radar for a moment, waiting, and when it didn’t return, he sat listening for a moment. Probably a large animal.

 

He peered out the window, but even if it wasn’t an animal, he wouldn’t be able to see anything through the thick foliage.

 

A few minutes passed before he let his eyes go back to the tactics book. He liked reading about the old generals. There might have been technological advances since then, and war might look different, but there was always something to learn from those who’d had to think with their heads, use what they’d had.

 

When the radar blipped again, he drew out his gun, setting it beside him on the seat as he started preparing the jet to take off. This time the blip returned with another to its right. Two, he could take two, but this jet was the only way he was going to get his people out. He couldn’t afford to lose it.

 

It was a strategic decision. Garrett would have told him to hold ground, but he had seen the way Maria Hill had acted on the flight over. She would do what she needed to on her end of things. His part of the mission, what was important for him to do, was to be there to get them back to the Bus, and he couldn’t do that if something went wrong and he got captured or was stranded on the ground.

 

He started the jet’s engines as an explosion sounded to the plane’s right flank, causing the jet to shake along with the ground. “Okay then,” Trip said to himself as he continued preparing the jet for takeoff. "We're going to have to do this the hard way.”

 

He wheeled the jet sharply around the small clearing, feeling the wheels fight against the wet ground. “Come on,” he said, hearing another nearby explosion, guessing if they were missing with something that could fire rockets, then they must still be a little distance away.

 

As soon as the nose of the jet was pointed in the right direction, he fired the missiles, immediately pushing the jet into reverse. The wheels squealed against the ground as he tried to get enough space to get the jet into the air.

 

There was a clang as something hit the side of the jet. Trip glanced at his mirror to see a rope hanging down. A few yards away where a line of trees marked the end of the small clearing he occupied stood a man in a black uniform, the rope attached to the large line-throwing gun he held in his hands.

 

There was another clank. That was it, he was going to have to get this jet in the air with the room he had to work with.

 

He pressed the jet forward as quickly as he could, pulling up and feeling the tops of the trees hitting the underneath and pushing him off balance. “Come on, baby, come on,” he told the jet, laughing when it cleared the tree tops and was in the sky.

 

“Hill, you there?” he asked.

 

“Kind of busy right now. What is it?”

 

“Had to move position. There were hostiles that came to visit.”

 

“You know the secondary locations. Report back when you can.”

 

He nodded to himself, breathing out a sigh of relief. This rainforest was a tricky location, and he had to hope that however they had found him the first time wouldn’t make it easy for them to find him a second.

 

Deciding to stay in the air for as long as he could, he circled around the island, frowning when a part of the rope appeared in one of the mirrors. He shouldn’t be able to see that, unless…

 

They were trying to board the jet. Trip angled the jet down, hoping that he could shake them off by flying low over some tree tops. For good measure after skimming the trees, he rolled a couple of times, hoping the combination would have been enough to dislodge them.

 

A few minutes later, Trip heard a loud tearing sound and looked out his window to see a soldier trying to tear his way into the backseat. Trip rolled the jet again, seeing the man temporarily lose his balance, but when the jet righted itself, he was still hanging on.

 

Trip set the plane in a straight line away from the island and put it on autopilot, getting out of his seat with his gun. By that time, the man had ripped a small hole into the jet. He pulled out a gun from the holster at his waist when he saw Trip, but Trip had already fired at him. He watched the man fall off the jet, stunned, as the jet itself started to spiral down, the controls warning him about the autopilot not functioning.

 

“What is going on?” Trip asked out loud, but when he got back to his seat he noticed the black smoke billowing out from the back of the plane. The manual controls barely wanted to allow him to guide the jet as systems started failing, and he watched as a second solider parachuted down to grab the first one.

 

Trip commed the Bus. “Skye, Fitz, Simmons, one of you there?”

 

“We’re here,” Simmons said, her voice chipper. It sounded like she was a secretary answering the phone. “Is everything all right, Agent Triplett?”

 

“I’m about to crash this jet.”

 

“Oh. Oh my. Let me just… go and get… Skye doesn’t know how to fly… Coulson! Let me go and get Coulson!”

 

“Why isn’t Coulson in on the comm?” Trip asked.

 

“I, umm, he was taking some alone time,” Simmons said.

 

“Great, we’re in the middle of a fucking rescue attempt, and the man decides he needs some alone time.” Trip headed to a smaller island off the main one, knowing the last thing he would want would be to crash the jet into the ocean. “Listen, Jemma, I don’t need to know how to fly this, I need to give you my coordinates. You guys are going to have to come up with some way to come get us off of the island.”

 

“But we only have the Bus, and I thought we couldn’t land it there.”

 

“Be creative, I don’t know, but I’m sending you my coordinates right now.”

 

“I, umm… okay, got them! I have them, and I am going to get everyone together, and the important thing is that you stay safe. Are you going to be able to land?”

 

“I think so,” he said, “But the jet is not going to be able to fly after this.”

 

“Good. Good you are safe, I mean, not that the jet is crashing... I will let you fly in silence, but let me know if there is anything you need. Anything at all. And oh, tell us when you land safely. That is very important as well.”

 

“And Simmons?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Make sure to bring a med kit. I might need it.”

 

“Oh, yes, of course. Right. Stay safe. We’ll be there when we can.”

 

He flipped a few controls. If he could bring this thing in without having to eject, then it would be better. Trip had needed to eject his seat once, in a bad situation around Beirut. He’d spent the next few months in a cast, bored and watching reruns of old television shows in his small apartment. He’d hated it. It hadn’t felt like home. He’d been on the road so much that being on an airplane felt more natural than being in a room watching the same view outside his window day after day.

 

He sent a silent prayer of thanks when the wheels decided to lower. He was pretty sure the engines had been sabotaged somehow. There might be more damage than that, but the wheels and the wings were fine, and he could work with that.

 

Trip braced himself as the jet hit the island hard, speeding along the path he’d chosen, a clear area near the beach that was too short for what he needed. If he got to the thick clusters of trees lining the beach, there was a chance he’d crash too hard into them, so he worked on creating all the drag he could. The jet bumped and plowed along the sand, jarring him in his seat, and he felt his muscles tense as he approached a large tree.

 

He angled the jet so that the tree hit the passenger side, busting the window and tearing along the metal with a screech. When it stopped, he took a deep breath, feeling the scratches from the glass on his face and right arm, but nothing was broken. Trip took one more breath to steady himself and unbuckled.

 

“Damn, I don’t miss flying.” He grabbed his stuff and found the flare gun in the back, hoping the rest of the team didn’t take too long to find him.

 

\---

 

Coulson had been sitting in his office when Skye found him, looking at what looked like a large gold coin. “I’ve known her for a long time, Skye.”

 

She walked closer. “Yeah, you guys are both old.”

 

That made him smile, but then he grew serious again. “It’s not the first time I’ve let her down, and it’s probably not going to be the last either. I should have listened to her, but… I didn’t.” He held up the coin, “Collector’s coin, mint condition. When I was a kid, well it’s a long story, but I ended up taking it. Without paying. Now I keep it. It reminds me.”

 

“Not to shoplift?” Skye asked.

 

“To not want things so much that they cloud my better judgment.”

 

“Oh.” Skye put her hands in her lap. “Yeah, I guess I could learn that lesson too.”

 

“It’s not personal. The way Hill’s handling this mission. It’s not personal, not about you.” It wasn’t an admonishment. Skye knew it was meant to be comforting.

 

“Yeah, well. It feels personal. To me. I’m the one that let May get taken. I didn’t even do anything, I just… ran.”

 

“It was the right call,” he said.

 

“Yeah, it was the right call because I…” Skye had her hand in the air, but she looked at it and let it fall. “I mean, maybe some people are just born to be super field agents, and I was born to type things super fast onto a computer.”

 

“It’s a little more than typing, Skye, and it’s a little more than inborn talent. You haven’t been working on being in the field that long. You’ll get there.” He leaned forward. “Besides, if I remember correctly, Maria was never exactly known for what she could do in the field. She’s good. Others are better.”

 

“Miss I used to basically run S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

 

“People have different talents. That’s my point.”

 

Skye sighed. “It’s hard. It’s hard watching someone else do it. It’s hard because when we had Ward…” She stopped herself and looked up at Coulson like she’d been caught. “Not that we’d want his stinky H.Y.D.R.A. ass here, but, you know, he trained me like I could… make something of myself.”

 

“I think the other members of the team believe in you more than you give them credit for. Including Agent May.”

 

“Well I wouldn’t if I were in her place.”

 

Before she could say anything else, they both heard Simmons over a comm speaker. “Agent Trip has crashed his jet. We’re now responsible for extracting, well, everyone from the island.”

 

Skye and Coulson both got to their feet, as Coulson told Simmons they would be right there.

 

They all met at the command deck, Fitz included, and Coulson looked at Simmons. “So tell us what is going on.”

 

The four of them listened to what Trip had relayed to her. Fitz was the one that said, “We don’t have a jet. We don’t have anything that could possibly get to the island and---”

 

“If Trip was taken down, then we can’t take something that flies,” Skye said. “I don’t know about you, but if he can get taken down, what chance do we have?”

 

“So what do you propose?” Simmons asked.

 

“A boat,” Coulson said. They looked at him. “We probably couldn’t even find a jet on short notice, but a boat… a boat we could do.”

 

“So we get a boat. Then what?” Skye asked.

 

“What if the boat is attacked? I mean, these people had the equipment to take down a jet.” Simmons glanced at Fitz. “Is there no one else we can contact, or…?”

 

Coulson bought his hand down on the command table, the noise jolting the discussion to a halt. “Listen, we’ve managed in harder situations than this. We’ve been taking hostage by people with guns on our own plane. This is easy. All we have to do is go in, grab our people from their pick-up locations, and bring them back here. Simmons, I want you and Fitz to stay here, keep us posted if you hear anything else. Skye and I will find a way to secure a boat, then we’ll find Agent Trip, get the last known coordinates on Hill and Barton and hopefully Agent May. Does anyone have any problems with that?”

 

They all stared at him. “You and me?” Skye asked.

 

“You wanted to work more in the field. You’re not going to learn by staying on the plane.”

 

“Right.” She nodded once. “Right, so we’ll get the boat and get everyone off of the island.”

 

“We don’t even know if Agent Hill and Clint Barton have made it out of the building with Agent May,” Fitz said.

 

Coulson shrugged. “We control the part of the mission we can control and hope for the best.”

 

The three of them nodded, and Coulson looked at Skye. “Let’s go find ourselves a boat.”

 

\---

 

“Did you notice the top secret lab set-up?” he asked. Maria glanced back as Clint took down another soldier with an arrow. They were in a room surrounded with glass tanks full of blue-lighted water, strange looking monitors and several metal tables and trays holding instruments that looked surgical.

 

“We don’t have time,” she told him.

 

“Maria, why do they even have her here?”

 

“We don’t have time,” she said more forcefully. She grabbed a gun off of a fallen body and shot the next soldier running at her with it. The whole facility had been flashing red lights for at least five minutes now, and they were still stuck trying to fight their way out of this huge room. “Sometimes I really hate people who are willing to die for their cause,” she told Clint as she shoved the back of the gun into the face of someone behind her.

 

“Know what you mean,” he said, both breathing hard as they surveyed the room and found everyone else on the floor.

 

“Okay, let’s go.” According to the device Fitz had given her, they weren’t far off from where May was being held. Maria ignored that tight, hard feeling in her stomach that being in this place had given her. This wasn’t the minor leagues, whoever had set this up had clearly been working on it for a long time.

 

They’d already gone down a set of stairs, and now the ground sloped down into a part of the building that seemed to be even more underwater. They walked down towards a bend in the walkway where it branched out to the right into a long corridor filled with doors. Beside all the doors were identical keypads that seemed to work by either code or a card swipe. “So what do we do now?” Clint asked.

 

Whoever the people running this operation had been, they seemed to have been the first to clear out. That probably meant that this building wasn’t going to stay around for much longer. Maria surveyed the nearest keypad closely, trying to ignore the sense of urgency that was tugging against her thoughts. She knew from experience that blowing up keypads hardly ever produced results, though sometimes she wished they did. Where was Natasha when you needed her?

 

“Woah, looks like someone was on the boss’s wrong side,” Clint said, walking towards a body slumped against an alcove in the wall.

 

Maria moved to where he was standing over the body. The woman was hard to recognize, dark hair matted over her face, broken eyeglasses hanging off the end of her nose. She had been shot through the chest exactly twice. Maria bent down, retrieving the badge that was clipped to the woman’s lab coat, flipping it over to see the name and picture. _Dr. Carolina Washington_ , she read, _Facility 04-F98, Malaysia_. There was still nothing to identify the organization who had built the facility, but the picture and the name made her blood run cold.

 

She composed herself before showing it to Clint. “Have you seen this woman before?” she asked.

 

“No.” He looked up at her. “Why?”

 

“She was S.H.I.E.L.D.”

 

“Do you think this is H.Y.D.R.A.?” he asked.

 

“I don’t know.” She kept the badge in her hand and stood up, looking down at the device. “Right now we need to find Agent May and get out of here.” Watching the screen, she moved a couple of doors down and swiped the card over the keypad. It slid open, revealing a dark room, the light from the hall splashing onto the floor tiles. She took a step into the room, the sound of the warning siren going off in nearby corridors blocking her from hearing anything else.

 

“May?” She took another step inside, past where the light tried to broach the darkness of the room, a pitch black that put her on edge as she continued trying to listen through the wailing that was throbbing now in her ears. Maria sensed the movement before it happened, but not in enough time to stop her legs from being swept out from under her. She heard Clint shout something, but she was too busy rolling out of the way of the next attack.

 

She managed to get to her feet in time to block the blow that came at her. She blocked another with her arm, feeling a sharp pain as a kick landed on her side. She stumbled to the side, managing to get up straight enough to block the next kick with her own leg. The only reason she could keep up was because the fighting was familiar. Maria managed to grab the foot the next time it came towards her, trying to use it to throw her opponent off balance, but the person twisted away, and she felt the bright burst of white pain as a foot landed against the side of her head.

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Clint notching an arrow to his bow. “Clint, wait!” She’d barely got the words out before a kick landed to her stomach.

 

She was still trying to recover her balance when she felt herself being shoved against the wall. The light from the doorway spilled onto half of May’s face now, leaving the rest in shadows. May seemed unsteady for a moment, long enough for Maria to grab her wrists. “Melinda, it’s me.”

 

“But who are you really?” May asked, her teeth clenched together.

 

“It’s me. It’s Maria.”

 

Uncertainty slipped into her features. She closed her eyes and shook her head. When Maria felt safe enough to let her go, May slumped against the wall. “My head hurts too much for this.”

 

“As touching as this reunion is, I think we should get out of here,” Clint said. “Because I don’t know about you, but flashing red lights and evacuations tend to mean one thing, and I really don’t want to die right now.”

 

“Listen, May, we think this building is about to self-destruct---”

 

“I heard him.”

 

“Well, you didn’t hear the part where this building is underwater,” Maria said. “Deep enough you can’t see it from the surface.”

 

“How did you get in?” May asked.

 

“Ventilation system, but there’s no way to get back to it at this point. It’s across the building.” Maria sighed. “There has to be another way out of here.”

 

“That doesn’t involve pressure suits?” Clint asked. “Or do you have those in your pack?” He gave a skeptical glance in May’s direction where she was resting against the wall. “Is she even going to make it?”

 

She opened her eyes to glare at him. “I’ll make myself.”

 

“All right then.” He took a deep breath. “So what’s the plan, boss?”

 

“’You’re no longer deputy director of S.H.I.E.L.D.,’ they keep telling me. Then the moment we’re in danger, I’m suddenly in charge again.” Maria put a hand on her hip and looked at them both. “We’re going to have to find an exit, and we’re going to have to find a way to take it. It’s the only thing we have time for.”

 

“I’m starting to think Fury never let you make the plans,” Clint said.

 

“We go through the ceiling,” May said. She gave Maria a look. “You do have the equipment for that?”

 

“I have a grappling gun.” Maria noticed the look Clint was giving her. “What?”

 

“In your pack?”

 

“I happen to be very concise when I pack,” Maria told him.

 

“It’s true,” May said. “Clint, do you have anything that can burn a hole through the ceiling?”

 

“Think I can find something.” He grabbed an arrow and notched it. “The two of you might want to cover your eyes.”

 

They heard one of Clint’s arrows explode against the ceiling. May and Maria opened their eyes and looked up to see some of the thick plastic of the ceiling melted away into a hole big enough to squeeze through. Hill wiped herself off and got out the grappling gun before aiming it at the hole, satisfied at the sound of it latching onto the floor above.

 

“So how did you know there wasn’t water above the ceiling?” Clint asked.

 

May glanced over at him. “I didn’t.”

 

He looked at Maria, who shrugged. She hoisted herself onto the rope. “This brings back high school gym class.”

 

Clint laughed, taking the rope in his hands when she was finished. “You going to make it?” he asked May. She was leaning with her hands against the front of her thighs and her eyes closed again.

 

“Just go,” she barked. There wasn’t time to argue, so Clint grabbed the rope and crawled up to the second story. The flashing red of the warning lights was more obvious from his new vantage point, flooding the bottom floor in waves as he watched May grab onto the rope.

 

There was a hand on his shoulder. “Clint, look at this,” Maria said.

 

He straightened up and looked around at the second floor. There were panels on the wall full of information about important people from several governmental organizations and from several different countries, so many profiles it almost hurt to look at them all. They all flickered in sync with the warning lights.

 

There was a whole separate section of images, diagrams that looked like bright threads within the outlines of human bodies along with strands of numbers and warnings that the access code had been denied. “What were they doing in this room?” Clint asked.

 

Maria didn’t answer. She’d been looking at her own profile on the wall when there was a loud thump below. She knelt down by the hole. “May, what’s going on?”

 

It was Clint that stated the obvious. “I think they drugged her.” He shouted down to May, “Tie the rope around your waist. We’ll hoist you up.”

 

“I can do it,” May said, giving them a pointed look before grabbing back onto the rope. She made it a few feet before she stopped, swinging with the rope.

 

There was a crushing sound in a far corridor, one that shook the building. “What was that?” Clint asked.

 

After a moment, they heard a roaring sound growing in the distance. “I’m going down after her,” Maria said, her legs already through the hole, and before Clint could say anything she was gone.

 

Underneath the roaring sound was a trickling now. Once Maria had landed on her feet, May said, “I’m just going to slow you down.”

 

“We came here to rescue you, and that’s what we’re going to do. Now would you at least help me do that?” she said, grabbing the rope and tying it around May’s waist. There was at least half an inch of water on the floor now and more kept seeping in.

 

May said nothing, but when Maria said, “Come on, let’s get out of here,” she nodded in response.

 

Maria tugged on the rope. “Okay, Clint, I can prop her up from down here, you pull her up there.”

 

The water was at least three inches deep now, with a slight current of its own as it ran from one side of the hall to the other. Maria created a platform with her hands that May used to hoist herself up. It didn’t take much work from Clint to pull her up through the hole in the ceiling.

 

Maria waited for the rope to be untied from May and jumped back onto it. By that time the water had risen to Maria’s knees. There was another explosion, one that sent a wave through the water in the hallway, and then another roar as more water gushed into the hallway.

 

By the time she climbed through to the second floor, Maria was pulling her legs out of the water. May was looking at the walls, which were flickering worse now, information on them almost unreadable.

 

“Okay, where do we go now?” Maria asked.

 

“I’m pretty sure the only answer to that is up,” Clint said.

 

The three of them looked at the high ceiling. “If we open it up and there’s water, the water is going to rush in,” Maria said.

 

Clint snorted. “You mean like it’s rushing in downstairs.”

 

“Not to mention the both of you are right. They plan to blow up this building now that it’s been compromised,” May told them.

 

“Is everyone in S.H.I.E.L.D. is such an optimist?” Clint asked. “Okay, what do we do then?”

 

“Go parallel, near to the floor. Between that and the water starting to come in from downstairs, it might take care of the pressure from the water coming in,” Maria said.

 

“You want me to use an arrow?”

 

“I think I have something better.” Maria pulled out a round disk.

 

“Of course you have a bomb,” Clint said. “When we get out of this, remind me to ask you if you have a drink hidden in there. A beer would be nice.”

 

“Funny.” She planted the disk on the wall right next to the floor and stepped back. As they stepped back, they were already splashing in the thin layer of water that had come up to the second floor. “Clear.”

 

The three of them closed their eyes, seeing the bright flash through their eyelids of the sharp, concentrated blast of the bomb, which was followed by the sound of water rushing in.

 

The building shook a moment later, but not from their tiny explosion. There was no time to worry about it, with the hole they had opened they were already standing in water up to their waists. Clint dove under first, pushing himself through the hole and out into the lake. “Go!” Maria told May.

 

“I’ll slow you down.”

 

“You’re slowing me down now.”

 

She gave Maria a glare before she dived down into the water that was up to their shoulders. Maria followed a moment after, noticing how much effort it was taking May to move out of the building. The opening into the building was big enough, she swam to help, pushing and dragging them both out into the lake.

 

They were deep enough, the light from the surface still seemed a far distance off as it slanted down into the water. Maria stroked through the water, trying to get as far from the building as possible, but it wasn’t long before she noticed May was still lagging behind. She seemed to be struggling to make herself move, and Maria glanced at Clint before swimming back towards May.

 

She could feel her lungs burning already, a feeling that built with each stroke through the water, and as soon as she could, she wrapped her arm around May’s body, and turned to follow Clint. It was hard work moving them both through the water, and the surface seemed like it never got any closer, and Clint looked farther and farther away.

 

It seemed like maybe it was doable, even though Maria was losing her grasp on consciousness as she tried to fight against the urge to breathe. Suddenly there was a burst of light from the building, followed by a force that slammed against them, shoving their bodies hard in the opposite direction. Pain overtook Maria’s senses, causing her to inhale sharply. At some point she had let go of May as she started to try to cough up the water, fighting as best she could to get towards the surface.

 

It didn’t matter. The surface was still several yards away, and her body and mind were slipping, the thrashing fading as her muscles slackened. Only the desperation held her for a few more moments, as she gripped as hard as she could onto consciousness, but then there was nothing left to fight the darkness that rushed in to swallow her.

 


	6. Chapter 6

_Ten Days Ago, Unknown Location, Malaysian Rainforest_

 

May felt groggy as she came to, and her vision was blurred when she tried to open her eyes. All she could make out was the dim fluorescent light that seemed to be emanating from the center of the ceiling. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, her arms sore from the unnatural position she must have been holding for too long. Her mouth was dry, and she tasted something metallic on the back of her tongue. She struggled to get into a sitting position, her eyes refusing to focus, and her head hurt the more she tried to see anything.

 

So May kept her eyes closed, mentally reviewing what she could remember. Skye and the mission in Singapore, that was clear. When she’d stepped off the elevator, she’d remembered the woman who had greeted them as Dr. Lim, but she hadn’t remembered from where. It didn’t matter. If May remembered her, then something was wrong.

 

She managed to sit up, feeling vertigo wash over her when she did. May could faintly remember the feel of a needle in her arm, but she’d been struggling too much to notice what was in the needle. There had been several men in the lab, stronger than they should have been. They had prepared, which told her they had probably known she’d been coming.

 

The lab itself had been authentic, but it hadn’t seemed permanent, probably something moved into the building temporarily while they set up this ambush. But why ambush S.H.I.E.L.D.? Especially Coulson’s team. None of them had information that was valuable, not like Fury or Hill or even some of the various members of H.Y.D.R.A. who were still scattered across the globe.

 

She sat up straighter when she heard a door open, and there was a soft voice. “Here, drink this.”

 

May refused to drink from the cup she felt placed near her mouth. She was trying to calculate what the best move was to make, but she knew even if she took this girl down, there was no way in her current state she would get out of wherever she was being kept. She might even be underground or underwater for all she knew, in a submarine or an aircraft. “Are you H.Y.D.R.A.?” she asked finally. They were usually pretty cocky, especially now that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been dismantled.

 

The cup was taken away. “The water will be right here,” the girl said, leaning down, and May could hear her clothes shift as she stood upright. There soft footsteps before the door opened and closed again.

 

May got to her feet, using the energy she had to feel out the room with her hands, what it contained, and where the exits were – one door near the front of the room and no windows. The walls were smooth, plastic with no roughness from its manufacturing. The floor was a strong metal, but she could find grooves between plates or tiles of it.

 

When the girl had come in there had been the sound of a keycard being swiped. Feeling around the door near the wall, May’s fingers found a keypad, but there were no buttons to press. It would only be activated by a card.

 

She fought the tiredness that was trying to settle over her; her vision was clearing enough that she could make out the outline of the things in the room. Her mouth was still dry, but she was sure that whatever was in the cup wasn’t only water.

 

She struggled to say conscious, see if there was anything else she could find out, but her eyes felt too heavy.

 

\---

 

May woke up sitting, slumped against the wall with her hand now handcuffed onto the bed. She pulled at her wrist, glad to see that her eyesight was clearing. The cup of water was sitting in the middle of the floor where it had been left, a small water beetle swimming around the top of it. Other than that, it was hard to tell how much time had passed.

 

Her head was pounding, her throat now as dry as her mouth. She looked to see if there was anything to pick the handcuff with, but even her clothes had been changed out for some cotton garments that looked not unlike a prison uniform.

 

Now that her eyesight was back, she reexamined the room. The floor was metal plating, but with an odd pattern to it. Usually metal plating overlapped, but these had an indention between them.

 

She resettled against the wall. They’d taken her for a reason, so eventually something would need to happen. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t afraid of being interrogated, and being moved might be her best chance to get herself out of here. The facility looked permanent, unlike the office in Singapore. There was something odd about the air pressure in the room. It was cold in a sterile way, so it might be a facility where they did some kind of medical work or research.

 

It felt like hours before the door finally opened, and this time May could see the same small girl. She looked like she was Indonesian. Maybe she hadn’t been moved far from Singapore then. That was good. Maybe her team could track her here.

 

The first thing the girl did was to pick up the cup of water, placing it on her tray before replacing it with another identical cup. She also had skewered chicken and a bowl of rice. The girl nodded her head once and was about to leave. May stopped her by asking, “Where am I?”

 

She offered a shy smile and turned and left.

 

The detail of her being there seemed as odd and out of place as the water beetle.

 

Seeing the food made it sharply clear how empty her stomach felt. Still, May left the food on the floor. If she left herself dehydrated, then they would have less time to get whatever it was they wanted out of her.

 

Her body was starting to feel weak, though, so May laid on her side to conserve energy.

 

\---

 

When May woke up, she still felt weak, but this time she was on a chair, her hands tied behind her. Wiggling them revealed that the rope was tight, tight enough to chafe at her skin. She snorted once, amused, because she’d never been a good candidate for interrogations. “What do you want?” she asked.

 

“We’ll get to that shortly.”

 

The voice sounded familiar. May raised her head to look into the eyes of Victoria Hand. “Is this some kind of joke?”

 

“It’s not a joke, Agent May. We have some questions, and we believe you have some answers.”

 

“And who’s this ‘we’ you’re talking about?” May asked. “Because it’s not S.H.I.E.L.D. Not like this.”

 

“S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone. We both know that.” Hand crossed her arms. “I’m sorry we had to treat you like this, but we were afraid you wouldn’t listen otherwise.”

 

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

 

“Did you really think it would stop?” Victoria asked. “S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury, the whole operation? Did you really think any of us would stop?”

 

“What else can you do?” May asked. “You’re not sanctioned. Besides, Fury is dead.”

 

“Now you sound like Hill.”

 

“Can’t help it if the man’s dead,” May said. She held her chin up. “Cut to the chase, would you?”

 

“We know you did the paperwork for Fury.” She watched Victoria walk a couple of steps to the right then turn to face her again.

 

“It is what an administrator does. Go ahead. Check the job description.”

 

She shook her head with the ghost of a smile. “Project Gateway?”

 

“Never heard of it,” May said. “Even if I had, you know when Fury made hard copies, they weren’t exactly made into pamphlets. I would have had no access to it.”

 

Hand studied her for a long moment. Then she turned and walked off, her heels clicking against the floor. May looked around the room, but it was non-descript. The only interesting feature was that none of it was concrete. She looked at the floors, finding them the same as in the room they’d been holding her in before.

 

It seemed like forever until the single door squeaked open again, and this time it was the girl again with another cup of water. May didn’t hesitate when the cup was held to her mouth this time. The dehydration was becoming too much.

 

She felt like she could have drank twice what she did, but then the cup was taken away again. “See, not so hard.” The girl turned back to the door.

 

“Wait,” May shouted at her, but the girl didn’t turn back.

 

There was a low groan from the building, as if there were pressure against it. It added up to something, something that she needed to know to get out here…

 

Her mind was slipping away from her, and the last thing she realized was that there had, in fact, been something in the water.

 

\---

 

It was dark when she came to this time, in a room with a distinct antiseptic smell to the air. May tugged at her wrists to find them still securely fastened. She worked on it for a minute, but whoever had tied it had known what they were doing.

 

She shook her head as fuzzy images came to her, talking to someone in this room. Coulson? Had it been Coulson? But he would have never left her here.

 

There had been an IV in her arm and a light that was shone into her face as they’d asked her questions. There had been voices in the dark behind the light, one that sounded distinctly like Simmons, and one that was familiar, but May hadn’t been able place it. It didn’t matter. It obviously hadn’t been Simmons, so she couldn’t trust who the other voice had belonged to either.

 

It was the other voice that had said, “It’s been days. At this point, we assume we’re not going to get anything else.”

 

“So what are we going to do with her?” the Simmons voice had asked.

 

“Leave her here. See who comes to rescue her.”

 

May drew in a breath, trying to pull something coherent out of the tumble of thoughts she was having. Everything still felt heavy, even her limbs. Her thirst had only abated slightly, and the hunger she felt didn’t make it easier to think.

 

Another deep breath. Her team was probably coming for her, despite what she’d told Agent Triplett, and if not, then she was on her own. Either way, she needed to find a way to free herself.

 

The floor. The tiles had those ridges between them, and considering the material they were made out of, the edges were probably sharp enough. She rocked her chair backwards, wincing at the pain of landing on her hands. It took a minute to reorient herself before she felt on the floor with her fingers. She cursed. All she could feel was smooth tile.

 

She swung her weight to move the chair, wincing as it landed on her hands again, but when she felt the floor this time, her fingers found one of the ridges. Pressing down hard, she rubbed her wrists against the floor, frustrated with how much time it was taking.

 

Still she could tell the fibers on the outside of the rope were starting to give. May glanced in the direction of the door and stopped to listen for footsteps. Not hearing any, she continued.

 

She was feeling tired by the time she felt the rope weaken enough she could pull her hands apart sharply. After a few tries it snapped, and she rolled to her side away from the chair.

 

She stumbled to the door, finding her feet unsteady, but when she got there, it was tight against the wall. May felt around, finding the keypad. It was the same as in the last room. She rested against the wall, trying to think.

 

She remembered talking to other people in the room, too, as a flash of Ward’s face came to her. Him, she could believe, but Coulson, and even Victoria Hand, that didn’t make much sense. Of course Hand could have been H.Y.D.R.A. all along, nothing would surprise May at this point, but Coulson? She shook her head.

 

Her limbs felt heavy, and she felt herself sinking to the floor, back against the wall, until she was sitting. She gritted her teeth together, trying to push herself back up, but then she gave up. She took a deep breath. Centered herself.

 

She was going to have to wait, hope that if an opportunity presented itself, she was going to have enough strength to use it.

 

_Now, Pangkal Pinang, Indonesia_

 

Machines started beeping as Melinda May came awake, fighting against the cannula and the IVs and various monitors attached to her. “Hey, hey, hey,” Simmons said, appearing quickly. “It’s all right, May. You’re inside a small clinic with me and a doctor whom Stark recommended. You’re safe. I promise.”

 

Simmons picked up a syringe, but May had gotten her bearings enough to stop struggling. She studied the room, eyes landing on the syringe. “How do I know you’re really Simmons?”

 

“I’m… not quite sure?” Simmons tilted her head, frowning in concentration. “I can do a blood analysis. Show you my DNA profile?”

 

May rolled her eyes. “Never mind.” She sighed. “How did I get here?”

 

“It’s a long story, really, and I’m not sure which parts you know or remember, but you were captured, and we managed to rescue you, but unfortunately you sustained a lot of internal damage in an underwater explosion, so--”

 

“I remember,” she said, though it was filtering back in pieces. May couldn’t even discern what had been real. She remembered seeing Victoria Hand… She sat up too hard, flinching slightly at the pain, but not taking her eyes off of Simmons. It wasn’t until Simmons winced that May realized that she had grabbed Simmon’s wrist. “Maria Hill came to rescue me.”

 

Simmons nodded. “She did. Along with Clint Barton.”

 

“Where is she? How is she?”

 

“You were both pretty injured when Skye and Trip managed to pull you from the water. We weren’t actually sure you’d make it, at first, but--”

 

“You’re not answering my questions.”

 

“Right. She’s stable. It’s been touch and go, for the past few days and you were the first to wake up. But you both should be fine with a little rest and…” Simmons frowned when May started removing her cannula. “…medical care. May, what are you doing?”

 

“How is Clint?” May asked, ripping off one of adhesive pads on her arm that attached her to the heart monitor.

 

“He’s fine. I mean, he’s been holed up here recovering, and he has some nasty bruises, but… May, you really shouldn’t be doing that. Hold on, let me get Dr. Lia.”

 

May continued to detach herself from the monitors as Simmons left the room. Her body was still weak, she could tell from the effort it took to move, and she could tell that she’d sustained her own bruises. It didn’t matter. Pain could wait. Healing could wait. All she let herself feel was an anger that simmered beneath the surface, enough she could ignore the pain and swing her legs over the bed.

 

The exhaustion made her feel like she was moving through water. She could remember the pain of the explosion, how helpless it had felt to try to swim before that, and the horrible inevitability of what it felt like to drown. She’d had very little control of herself since she’d been taken in that laboratory back in Singapore, and right now she wasn’t going to let anyone, even her team, tell her what she was going to do.

 

An Indonesian woman who May guessed was Dr. Lia rushed in. She pushed on May’s shoulders. “Get the sedative,” she told Simmons.

 

“No,” May told Simmons, who paused. May turned to stare down Dr. Lia. “I appreciate that you’re both taking care of me, but please get out of my way. Now.”

 

Dr. Lia hesitated before stepping to the side. May walked past her, through the door, and was instantly greeted by Skye in the hallway.

 

“I heard you talking to Simmons, and I thought I’d come see how you are doing. So how are you feeling? Is there anything you need?”

 

“Later, Skye.”

 

“Okay, later’s fine.” Skye’s nodding stopped, and she frowned as she watched May surveying the hallway. “Are you trying to find the others?”

 

It was obvious that it was a small clinic and not a hospital by the setup of the building. There weren’t many rooms, all of them branched off a single hallway.

 

When May didn’t respond, Skye pointed anyways. “Hill is across the hall. We had to keep you all at the end of the hallway so Dr. Lia could continue seeing her normal patients.”

 

“And Barton?”

 

“He’s been hanging with us on the Bus since he’s pretty much healed. I think he’s waiting around to make sure the two of you are okay.”

 

May gave her a curt nod. “Thanks.” She walked across the hall and paused with her hand on the doorknob. This was why she’d gotten out of bed, but her plans hadn’t included actually entering the room. She wondered why that was. She wanted to know that Maria was okay, but she hadn’t actually wanted to see her.

 

May turned the knob anyways, walking slowly inside. The room was the same as hers, exam table moved to the side to make room for the cot in the middle of the room, and the monitors making noise in the background. An antiseptic smell hung in the humid air, covering the more human scents that still lingered from the sweat and blood and bodily fluids the room had seen.

 

Maria was lying still on the middle of the bed, white covers pulled up to her chest, arms lying out beside her. Her eyes were closed, her face relaxed; she looked younger, like she always had when she slept. Her hair was damp and clung to her forehead. Her chest rose and fell with soft breaths, her mouth slightly opened, and the anger that May had felt flattened slightly.

 

She’d had reprimands and admonishments that she’d wanted to vent. She still probably would later. Right now, though, nothing she said was going to be heard.

 

“It was stupid, and I didn’t think you were stupid,” May told her.

 

She waited, but there was no response. She hadn’t expected one. There was nothing else to do after that. Part of her wanted to reach out, touch Maria to prove she was real and still alive, but it wasn’t her right anymore. She didn’t want it to be her right.

 

May looked over her one more time and left the room, the waning of the anger taking the last of her energy with it. She felt like she needed to sleep for a long time.

 

When she came out, Skye was waiting in the hallway for her.

 

May shut the door. She leaned against it and closed her eyes. There was too much going on in her head and no outlet for it. When she opened her eyes, she pushed away from the door and said, “Skye, Singapore wasn’t your fault.”

 

Skye’s eyes had gotten glassy, but she shrugged. “I’m going to train with Trip. I’m… I’m going to be good. We’re going to be good.” Skye’s smile was less convincing this time. “Are you okay?”

 

“I just need to rest. I’ll be fine.” May turned and went back to her room, where Dr. Lia and Simmons were in discussion with each other.

 

Simmons sighed and gave her a smile. “You’re back.”

 

Dr. Lia looked less approving. “Are you going to let us treat you now?”

 

May got back into the bed. She looked at Simmons. “When can we move this back to the Bus?”

 

“Umm, we…” Simmons glanced at Dr. Lia. “Theoretically, we could move you in a couple of days, if you remain awake and stable.”

 

May nodded. Later she would need to think about the things that had happened, try to figure out what she could about the people who had taken her, but right now, her body needed rest.


	7. Chapter 7

Coulson knew the rescue had been hard on the team.

 

He and Skye had picked Trip up in the boat before they had gone to the last coordinates they’d had on Hill and Barton. The boat itself had been borrowed from a nearby rental place, and while it wasn’t new by any stretch of the imagination, Coulson had felt quite proud of how it handled.

 

They had gotten there in on the heels of the explosion. He could still remember the column of water bursting out into the air, waves rocking their little boat as it crashed back down into the water. Clint had already broken the surface, waving and shouting at them, and as the water settled, they made their way over to him, through the gas that was bubbling up from the water.

 

Clint had looked like he was in bad shape when they’d pulled him onto the boat, but it had been nothing compared to May and Hill. They’d made a decision to do CPR despite the possibility of sustained internal injuries, trying to choose what might kill them less quickly, knowing their choice might not make a difference.

 

Coulson could still remember it all in vivid detail, how fast they had driven the boat back, how they had thought that the two of them were both going to die on the way. How Simmons had looked so serious as she’d worked on them back at the Bus, but her hands had been unsteady. How she’d sat and cried afterwards, partly, she’d told him later, because she’d had to choose one to focus on first, knowing she might have been making a decision on who would die. She’d chosen May.

 

He’d noticed the way that Skye had cried in Trip’s arms only after it was over too, as if the relief for her had been worse than the worry. Coulson himself had gone to his office, resting his forehead against his hand, a fine trembling running through his muscles.

 

He’d known before he left his office that he would look calm and collected, maybe angry, but he would not look affected. He thought to question why, but it was something he’d learned, working in S.H.I.E.L.D., and he hadn’t particularly felt like changing it right then.

 

It was a miracle that either of them had made it through. Whatever chance they’d had of figuring out who had taken May in the first place was probably buried at the bottom of the lake. His shoulders were tight. This situation was going to stay with him, haunt him for a long time. Worse, whoever had set this up had known how to get to him.

 

All the images he couldn’t erase from his memory, the way Simmons had thrown her arms around Fitz when she’d realized that Hill and May weren’t going to die on her right then, that they would have time to transport them to a real doctor. He’d seen a lot of action, but the only time he’d seen people get that badly injured had been himself, back in New York, and he wondered how he’d looked to people then. What it had felt like to look upon him.

 

Walking into May’s room at the clinic, these things washed over Phil, making him feel heavy. He looked across the hall, glad that Maria Hill had made it, because he had a suspicion that was one thing that May wouldn’t have forgiven him for.

 

He thought about Audrey, hoped that she was still safe, living her life. He hoped that she was happy.

 

May was eating some type of soup from a bowl when he knocked on her open door.

 

“How is it?” He asked. “It’s not hospital food, so hopefully it doesn’t suck.” He pulled a chair up to her bed and sat down in it. “Everyone’s glad to hear you’re awake.”

 

She was watching him, and she put her spoon down. “You let her come after me.”

 

“Ah, that.” He shrugged one shoulder. “You know what she’s like.”

 

She gave him a look. “Are you going to tell me what Singapore was about?”

 

“We’re going to have that discussion. Just not now.”

 

She must have heard the plea in his voice, because she didn’t protest, only clenched her jaw and looked forward.

 

“So how are you doing?”

 

“I can honestly say I’ve been better.” She turned her eyes back to him. “I can honestly say I’ve been worse. I owe her now, Phil, and you owe me for that.”

 

“I owe you for a lot of things,” he told her. “But I’ll keep that in mind.”

 

There were some boxes that shouldn’t be opened, some topics that shouldn’t be broached, and they all were almost tangible in the room at that moment. All the shared past, all the things that neither of them wanted to touch again, and he knew that May was dealing with a lot of her own. Sometimes it was as simple as being reminded for everything to become fresh again.

 

“Once, we were on some mission, the team and you and I were in this building, just passing through, and I heard something she used to play.” He took a breath, because even that feeling was so clear. He could close his eyes and picture it, but he looked at May instead. “Maybe appreciate that you can get some closure.”

 

May was looking away from him again. He wondered if somewhere in her mind she was in some place, some place she must have gone to during her long hours down in the basement, doing the paperwork. Some place steeped in the past and as far away from it as it was possible to get.

 

He smiled at her, put his hands on his knees to get up. “I’ll let you get back to your soup.”

 

He’d gotten to his feet and had turned to go when she said, “Phil.”

 

He turned to look at her, wait for what she had to say.

 

“There’s no such thing as closure.”

 

He considered her words, nodded once. “Simmons said you wanted to be on the Bus. We’re working on making a place for you.”

 

“Does that mean I have to stay in the bed?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

 

“Temporarily.”

 

She rolled her eyes.

 

“A few days,” he promised. He gave her one last smile before he left the room. The moment he was in the hallway again, he grew sober. Maybe she was right. Maybe there was no closure.

 

He stepped across the hall, stopped in to check on Maria. She was still quiet on her bed, only the sound of the machines, but Dr. Lia had told him that it was only a matter of time. “She just needs to heal.”

 

Coulson lifted her hand. He’d known her for a long time, and it almost felt like she was family. Maybe a first cousin. That would make Fury the strange uncle that always showed up to family reunions, but that seemed to fit too.

 

That decision, that Fury and Hill had made, he was still living with it. He still struggled with the questions of what it meant to have died, what exactly it was that was inside him that wasn’t there before and whether that had changed him.

 

“Maria, thank you. For getting her back. For helping with getting this whole thing together in the first place. It’s been a good team, but you were right about Ward. He was a poop.”

 

He let her hand down. It wasn’t like in a movie, she didn’t move at all. As he left, he eased her door shut again.

 

\---

 

Skye wondered if there was a limit to how much caffeine a person could consume before their heart would explode. She made a mental note to ask Simmons as her fingers ran over the keys. There had to be something out there in the cyber world, some trace, some tag she could find these people by. She’d tracked down S.H.I.E.L.D. after all, and she’d learned lots since then. She could fit the amount she’d learned into a whole encyclopedia set, if encyclopedias even still existed.

 

Trip came by with a sandwich on a plate, which Skye took gratefully, typing with one hand while she bit into it. She swallowed. “Thanks. And thanks for, you know, letting me cry earlier. Can we, you know, never mention that again? Also sorry for the mascara on your shirt…”

 

“It’s fine, Skye.” He sat down, looking at her computer screen. “Find anything yet?”

 

“Not yet, but I still have a few ideas.” She took a drink of coffee to wash down the bite of sandwich. “Ever had so much caffeine that your hands shake? I’m almost there.”

 

“That means you should probably get some rest,” he said.

 

Skye shook her head. “Sleep gives them time to hide… more.”

 

“They have secret underwater laboratories, they probably are going to stay the same amount of hidden,” he said.

 

“Don’t start using logic on me,” she said, giving him a playful shove on the shoulder.

 

He laughed too. “Fitz’s designed some machine that is supposed to be able to go salvage things in the water at the site of the explosion, see if it can find something, and apparently when it does, it just comes back here.”

 

“He likes to build find-y things,” Skye said.

 

“It’s impressive.”

 

“Like hacking into the C.I.A. is impressive?” Skye asked.

 

“You’ve hacked into the C.I.A.?” he asked.

 

“I might have,” she said. “It may have been during a rather heated bout of Truth or Dare…” Skye’s smile halted as she let her sandwich drop back onto the plate, and her voice was replaced by the sound of her rapid typing.

 

“Find something?” Trip asked.

 

“I… just… give me a minute.” Trip had seen people play video games with the intensity that Skye now worked at her computer. He wondered if she would have been some kind of video game prodigy if she’d wanted.

 

“I saw May today,” Skye said. Her eyes never left the screen, her fingers didn’t even slow down.

 

“How was she?”

 

“She was May, mostly, but she seemed focused on making sure Hill and Barton were okay.” She hesitated then, glancing over at Trip. “They must have been close before. Like back at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters or whatever.”

 

He couldn’t help chuckling at her.

 

“What?” Skye asked.

 

“It’s nothing,” he said, crossing his arms.

 

Skye gave him a look before she had to turn her attention back to the computer. “We’re going to talk about this, right after I…” She tapped a few more keys. “And I think I just managed to track them down.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Well, a trace of them. I mean, it’s going to take a little more work.” She leaned back with a smile. “But it was kind of like, I was the Hulk and their encryption was something small and tiny and easily smashed.”

 

“That’s great.” He offered her his palm, and she gave him a high five.

 

“And now I’m actually very tired,” she said, picking the sandwich back up. “Tired and surprisingly hungry.”

 

“That happens when you don’t rest. Or eat,” he said, laughing at her again, and she gave him a smile.

 

“I know. I just really wanted to do this for May.” She straightened up. “When you laughed about May and everyone being close, what was that about?”

 

He sat down beside her. “I think it’s more than that. I can’t say, but on the plane, it seemed like…”

 

“Like what?” Skye asked when he didn’t finish.

 

“I’ve worked with people I’ve been close to, and I know what it looks like, and this was… it was something different. That’s all I know. I promise.”

 

“Something different,” Skye repeated.

 

“Whatever past May has with Maria Hill, it must be pretty complex.” He sighed. “Though I guess we all have complex relationships.”

 

“I know he was kind of a sleazebag, but do you miss Garrett sometimes?” Skye asked.

 

Trip took a deep breath. “He was a surprisingly good S.O., but do I miss the man? After everything I know about him now, I realized I never knew him, and how can you miss someone you didn’t know?”

 

“You miss who you thought they were.” Skye shrugged. “Sometimes I think I miss Ward, a little, then it’s like you said. What I miss didn’t exist. It was some façade he gave us, and the real Grant Ward… he’s someone else. Someone I don’t even want to know. So how can I miss him?” She patted his leg. “But I think I’m going to get some sleep, if I can. Then I’ll tackle this again when I’m fresh.”

 

“Good thinking.” When Skye started to leave, he grabbed her hand. “And Skye, you shouldn’t be ashamed. Of the crying.”

 

“I thought we weren’t mentioning that again,” she said. “But thanks.”

 

With that, she left the room, sandwich half eaten by the computer.

 

\---

 

Clint Barton sat with his leg dangling off the edge of Coulson’s desk.

 

“That seems to be a trend,” Coulson said, and when Clint looked curious, he added, “People come on the plane, and I find them sitting on, or at, my desk.”

 

Clint laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m keeping my feet off it.”

 

“Generous of you.” He sighed. “I assume since you’re here that you want something?”

 

“It’s been awhile. I mean I haven’t seen you since New York, wanted to come by and say congratulations on being alive. I won’t ask how. Not sure I want to know.” He sighed. “Though with my record these days, I might need to find out soon.”

 

“Take my advice: Just stay alive.”

 

“That’s Plan A.” He picked up something off the desk, a bronze button, turning it over in his fingers. “Natasha and I weren’t around much for everything, by the time we were around enough to know Melinda, she was a legend, a legend who kept to herself. How is she?”

 

“She’s awake. She’s healing. Mentally, who knows? It’s always hard to tell with her.” He paused. “She probably wouldn’t appreciate you calling her Melinda.”

 

“After what we’ve all been through, I think she could let it slide this time.” Clint put the button down. “The two of you have known each other for a while.”

 

Phil shrugged one shoulder. “You could say that.”

 

“Natasha thinks that she could take her.”

 

“Natasha would.”

 

Clint glanced up. “We let Maria know because it was the right thing to do. Because that’s what you do for your own.”

 

Phil nodded. “It was the right call.”

 

“I know you think,” Clint said, “that you and this little plane full of people can handle anything, but you were in New York. The magnitude of the things we are handling now, the things that people with more skills than your team could ever dream of are barely handling, and… you’re going to get people hurt. You have gotten people hurt.”

 

“People get hurt in this line of business.”

 

Clint got to his feet. “They get hurt because there’s no one else to do the job, because if there were, we’d stay at home. No one wants to die for this, Phil. You should know that better than anyone.”

 

He had to think back to when they’d nearly lost Skye. He also remembered Maria Hill in a motel room telling him that he should let his people go their own way. “I can’t.”

 

“Why not?”

 

There were the questions he had for himself sometimes, like what meaning was left in a world where he wasn’t making this kind of difference? What meaning did his death have? He’d tried to picture Fitz and Simmons working for some private company, or for Tony Stark, and there was no vitality to it. “Because it’s who we are.”

 

Clint looked like he had a comeback, but he stopped. He shook his head instead. He stepped to where he was just beside Coulson. “She’ll get involved again, if she needs to, and about the only thing you or I can do about that is to make sure there’s no reason for her to.”

 

The more things changed… Phil sighed, knowing the truth of the words he was hearing, but he was unsure what there was to do about them. “I’m going to be more careful in the future.”

 

“Good.”

 

With that, Clint stepped out of the office. Simmons came in a few minutes later. “We’re almost ready to have Agent May on the Bus,” she said cheerfully, pausing when she noticed his mood. “Is everything okay, Sir?”

 

“It’s fine,” he said. “And that’s good. Be sure to let her know whenever you see her.”

 

She smiled again. “Oh, and Skye thinks she might be able to track down the people behind the lab in Singapore. She sounded pretty sure.”

 

“Has Fitz pulled anything from the water?”

 

“Not yet, but it was pretty decimated. Are you sure you’re all right?”

 

He managed to give her a smile, though he was sure it wasn’t much of one. “It’s been a rough few days.”

 

She nodded, as if she understood. “Well, we’re all here if you need anything.”

 

“Thanks.” He hesitated before he said, “How is Maria doing?”

 

“About the same. We are having to sedate her quite a bit, so it’s not quite as worrisome that she hasn’t been alert. It might take a few days.”

 

He nodded. “Good. Let me know if anything changes.”

 

She hesitated for a moment. “There is something I don’t understand, though.”

 

Coulson looked over, waited.

 

“Why target us? We’re not exactly important, nor did they take anything from us, and really, how did we get help? Why did we get help? S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone.”

 

He looked at Jemma, trying to decide how much to tell her, but there were only answers for part of it. “I think for those of us who were in the agency too long, we’ll always be part of S.H.I.E.L.D.. As to why they contacted us and why they took May, I don’t know. She’s been around for a while. There could be a lot of reasons.”

 

She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she tried giving him a smile. “Are we going to be okay? Our team?”

 

“We’ll manage.”

 

It was all Coulson had to offer her, and Simmons accepted it. Her questions stayed with him. He decided to go check on Skye. There was too much about this situation that wasn’t adding up.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Melinda had mentally reviewed everything she could remember, though it was not much, and what she did remember wasn’t very reliable. Whoever she’d been talking to, it hadn’t been Coulson, and it certainly had not been Hand. The only thing that made sense was that the drugs had made it seem like people she knew.

 

Two words stuck out in her memory. _Project Gateway_. That Fury had some secret project that might interest a criminal organization didn’t surprise May, but they hadn’t targeted her randomly. She didn’t know anything. It was possible Coulson did, but why interrogate her then?

 

She broke off her thoughts when Simmons came into the room. “Tell me you’ve come to take me back to the Bus.”

 

Simmons nodded. “We have everything set up, but--” Simmons held up a finger. “On the condition you actually rest.”

 

May declined to comment. She could rest later. Whatever was happening, whatever had happened to her, she was going to get to the bottom of it. She’d rest when she’d found whoever was behind this and made sure they’d paid.

 

She considered asking Simmons if anyone had uncovered anything yet, but the information would be clearer and more direct on the Bus. “So what are we waiting on?”

 

“Dr. Lia wanted to do one more exam, make sure you were ready.” When Simmons noticed May giving her a look, she said, “You’re not going to be under the care of a physician after this. It’s a good idea to be checked over first.” Simmons sighed. “I’m not trained for all of this, you know. It’s been quite stressful these past few days, and I would really appreciate not having to save anyone’s life. At least not for the rest of the month.”

 

May rolled her eyes. “Fine. When is she going to be here?”

 

“Soon. I promise.”

 

She glanced towards the door. May hadn’t been back to that room across the hall since that first time. She was observant enough to know that Maria wasn’t conscious yet. Clint had come by eventually, and he’d told her what the doctors knew, but there was a certain reproach there.

 

She wasn’t going to hold herself responsible. She’d gone in on orders. Clint knew as well as she did that she didn’t ask, would not have asked, for Maria to rescue her, but Maria did what Maria wanted to do, like she always had without opposing orders from Fury.

 

Fury wasn’t going to stop Maria now. He might only be pretending to be dead, but that certainly wasn’t going to end any time soon.

 

“She’s going to be okay,” Simmons said, and May shifted, uncomfortable at having her thoughts guessed. “It must be nice.”

 

May looked at Simmons, waited for the rest.

 

“To have friends who care about you that much. Sometimes I think about it, and you and Coulson both have a lot of people who care. So many people you’ve known. I only had Fitz before this, and now…” She sighed. “Do you think that Ward cared about us at all?”

 

“Ward only cared about himself.”

 

“That’s what people say about her,” Simmons said. “That she abandoned us to go work for Stark, that she didn’t stand for anything, but here we are. It counts for something, doesn’t it?”

 

May knew that Simmons only wanted to hear that what they did still mattered, but she wasn’t sure it was the truth. “Agent Hill did what she did because she’s pragmatic,” May said, finally. “Ward didn’t need any reasons. He was always planning to betray us, so he did.”

 

Simmons voice wavered as she spoke. “He was so convincing though.”

 

May looked over sideways at her. “There are going to be a lot of people who are convincing. You can’t trust them. The truth is no one ever knows anyone else.”

 

“I’d like to believe that even if that’s true, we can know each other enough. Enough for it to matter.”

 

May knew arguing with Simmons wasn’t going to change her mind. She had more important things to think about anyways.

 

There was a sentimentality that was sneaking up on her slowly. She didn’t know if it was being part of a team again or if enough time had passed. Other people might have found it to be a good thing, but May regarded it with suspicion. The world had caught her off guard once; she wasn’t going to be caught off guard again.

 

Dr. Lia opened the door. “I could use your help across the hall, Jemma.”

 

Simmons nodded. “Excuse me,” she told May.

 

Now it was probably going to be longer before she got out of this clinic and back to the Bus. She’d tried to keep to her routine in this small room, but she felt the strain of it on herself. Like something wasn’t being kept in place.

 

The door was closed, and what she’d been told to do was stay on the bed and wait. What she needed was to be left to herself, but she’d made a different choice for Coulson. Left that small basement to travel with him on his plane.

 

What changed her mind then was what changed her mind now. She’d decided to join Coulson when she’d remembered there was no such thing as peace.

 

May got to her feet, strode across the hall, and she had to step back as the door swung open on her. Maria stood there breathing heavily and looking at her.

 

“I told you that she was fine,” Simmons said, coming up behind Maria, but she stopped when she noticed the two of them staring at each other.

 

May broke the silence. “What were you thinking?”

 

“Right, because that would be the first thing that _you_ say. Not ‘thank you for saving my life. I know that I went into a situation unprepared and—‘”

 

“I had it under control,” May said.

 

“Under control? When we found you, you were so drugged that I probably could have been the Pope and you wouldn’t have known better, but sure, May, you ‘had it under control.’”

 

“And you had it under control? You didn’t even know how to get out of the building.”

 

“I’m sorry, last time I checked secret organizations didn’t leave the blueprints for their underwater facilities lying around.”

 

May rolled her eyes. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

 

Maria got quiet. “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t.” She turned back towards her room. “I changed my mind. Whatever was in that needle, give me that. Also two aspirin, a decent change of clothes and the directions to the nearest place that sells alcohol. I need a drink. Also my cell phone. I need my cell phone.”

 

May gave Simmons a look. “I expect to be on the Bus in ten minutes.”

 

“Charming,” Simmons said. “You both are so very charming. I’m so glad I saved your lives.” She looked towards the ceiling as she sighed. “Clear yourself with Dr. Lia, and I’ll go tell Coulson you’re ready to leave the clinic.”

 

Dr. Lia was in the room talking to Maria still. May rolled her eyes and turned to return to her room. She felt irritated, and she needed out of this small enclosed space. Needed to be working on figuring out why they had been targeted in Singapore.

 

She turned around and was in the doorway of Maria’s room again. “What is Project Gateway?”

 

Maria looked up. “What are you talking about?”

 

May gave her a look. “Just tell me.”

 

For a moment Maria’s mouth was a tight line. “I don’t know. You know as well as I do, it’s possible there was one, but unlike everyone likes to think, Fury didn’t tell me everything.”

 

May was pretty sure she was lying, but she couldn’t be sure. Maria kept her head up, met May’s eyes directly. She was a great liar, but she had learned from the best.

 

“This is important.”

 

Maria shifted so that she was sitting up straighter. “Don’t talk to me about important, May. There have been a lot of tough decisions this year, but I still know what’s important, or else I wouldn’t be lying here right now feeling like I’ve been hit by a semi-truck. Now was there anything else you wanted?”

 

“No. That was it.” May turned towards Dr. Lia. “I need cleared to leave.”

 

Dr. Lia sighed. “In a moment.”

 

She turned without another glance back at Maria. She needed out of this clinic.

 

\---

 

“And then they started fighting,” Simmons concluded, leaning back against the wall as she watched Skye typing on her computer. To Simmons’ right, Fitz had his brow furrowed in confusion, though whether it was at Skye or the story, Simmons couldn’t tell.

 

“Classic May,” Skye remarked without looking up. “She can’t stand to be rescued, so of course she’s going to take it out on someone.” Skye stopped typing. “I’d say she needs to get laid, but that didn’t really help. And it just reminds me that I need to get laid, and the only options I have on the Bus are…” She looked back and noticed Fitz and Simmons waiting for the rest. “…my friends,” she finished with a smile that tapered off quickly. “Maybe Hawkeye would go for it. I mean they say he gets around, right?”

 

“I have no idea about Clint Barton’s sex life,” Fitz said. “Nor do I want to know.”

 

“Probably not if you call him Hawkeye,” Simmons added. “I think he’s preoccupied right now, anyways. He seems anxious to leave.”

 

“No one told me when I agreed to come with you guys that I was signing up for a life of celibacy.”

 

“They kind of told us that when we joined the academy,” Fitz said.

 

“They were joking,” Simmons said.

 

“Has it been a joke for you thus far?” he asked. Simmons looked away.

 

“This conversation is too sad for me,” Skye said. “I’m actually sick of looking at this screen.” She pushed the laptop shut. “I wonder what we’ll do after this. I mean go after May’s kidnappers, sure, but that’s going a little slowly.” She swiveled around in her chair. “I mean, this is heavy duty kind of security. I hate to say it, but it might take me a few weeks.”

 

Simmons elbowed Fitz lightly, trying to keep a smile off of her face. “What were you saying Skye, earlier, about Agent May?”

 

“What, that getting laid apparently doesn’t help her personality?” Skye frowned when she noticed Fitz and Simmons trying not to laugh. “And she’s behind me, isn’t she?”

 

She turned her chair around to see Agent May watching her with that same neutral expression of admonishment she always wore. “Good to see you’re hard at work.”

 

“I’m going to deal with you later,” Skye muttered to Fitz and Simmons before putting on a smile. “Actually I was making a lot of progress before Simmons came over to gossip about what happened at the clinic.”

 

May’s eyes turned to Simmons who laughed nervously. “I just remembered that I left some test tubes on the… centrifuge. I better go attend to them before the samples get damaged. Excuse me.”

 

May glanced at Fitz, who threw up his hands. “Don’t look at me. I was just here for moral support.”

 

She rolled her eyes and moved to stand behind Skye. “Show me what you have so far.”

 

“Okay.” Skye pulled the laptop open and pushed a few buttons. “I don’t have much yet, but they were definitely using a server that was rerouted through Osaka here,” she pointed to a place on a map. “Though the signature on the encryption pattern is indicative of a hacker I met once in California but who is based out of Bangkok.” She pointed again, but then stopped and turned to May. “The funny thing about this is, usually if you are trying to hide yourself, you don’t use similar geographic locations, or you use one, but not around where you are doing whatever it is you are doing, but here we are in Indonesia, and all of their tech so far is based in Asia, so I don’t know if it’s a ploy to throw us off or--” Skye shrugged.

 

“You met once in California,” May repeated.

 

“It might have been at a Transformers convention… totally random but really awesome… for me… So what are you thinking?”

 

“Nothing yet. Let me know if you find anything else.”

 

Skye watched May leave. “And thanks for sharing.” It was obvious May knew something else, but Skye had no clue what it was. She made a mental note to ask Coulson later.

 

\---

 

Clint watched Maria pacing her hospital room. She finished her phone call finally and hung up before looking at him. “Tony says he can have a jet here tomorrow. Didn’t ask what happened to the last one, and I didn’t offer him that information.”

 

“If you have a tab with that man, I don’t want to see it.”

 

“The only tab I have with Tony is what I rack up at the bar with Pepper when they’re fighting again, and he owes me that. Pepper… is a bit of a talker.”

 

“So why the rush home, Maria? Don’t you think you should stay and rest? I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t even be walking around the room.”

 

She looked at him, then shook her head. “I’ll heal. Besides, I can rest in New York. I am too sober and too bored to stay here. It’s going to drive me crazy.”

 

“Are you sure this isn’t about her?”

 

“What, May?” Maria laughed. “Despite the fact that she is the single most infuriating person on the planet, no, it has nothing to do with her. I know what everyone thinks, but this is about me having a life, Clint. And a job. Tony doesn’t pay me to sit around.”

 

“It’s not sitting around, it’s healing,” Clint said, though he was more amused than angry.

 

She gave him a look. “I need something to focus on.”

 

“I know you do.”

 

She sighed. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” She crossed her arms. “It’s one thing for me to take risks, but…”

 

“I knew what I was getting into.” Clint shrugged. “Natasha said it would be fun.”

 

“Was she right?”

 

“It’s been something.”

 

“I miss it.” She was somber as she looked off into the distance. “Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D., leadership… I miss having things in place. I miss feeling like I was making the changes. Now Tony makes the changes, and I just... help him do that.”

 

“How is that different than helping Fury?”

 

“Fury didn’t expect me to be an extension of him. He expected me to function without him, and if Tony died tomorrow… well, I’d probably be put on trial. But after that?” She shrugged. “I’m not supposed to miss it. The ship went down on my watch, and I’m not supposed to miss it, but I do.”

 

“You’re allowed to miss it.”

 

She looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “I can’t. I don’t know how. I cannot remember one time in my life when I was allowed to miss anything, and S.H.I.E.L.D.? At least there’s a reason I can’t.”

 

“I think the pain killers are making you emotional.”

 

That made her smile. “Do you think you’ll go back to New York with me?”

 

“For the moment.” It was his turn to look away. “I don’t know what to do with myself either.”

 

“You could always join us.”

 

“The way things are going, there will be a time when I need to, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

 

Maria nodded at that. “Will you distract the doctor? I wanted to talk to Coulson one more time. Let him know I’m taking off.”

 

“Why do I have a feeling you aren’t getting permission from the doctor to leave tomorrow?”

 

“It wouldn’t be the first time in my life I’ve heard the words, ‘ _against medical advice_ ’.”

 

Clint smiled. “Take care of yourself, Maria. In New York. Better than you’re doing now.”

 

“Don’t worry. I’m sure Pepper is going to force me into some awful spa retreat. Make me try to share my feelings. Stay on bed rest…” She let out a breath. “Maybe Indonesia is not such a bad idea.”

 

“Pepper’s not that bad. Besides, I’m sure Tony is going to keep her busy.”

 

“You know, in most cases, I would resent the mental picture you just gave me, but in this case, the mental picture is Pepper actually being kept busy cleaning up Tony’s messes.”

 

“Maybe he’ll behave.”

 

Maria snorted. “You really are an optimist.”

 

“Someone has to be.”

 

“Maybe.” She pointed to the window. “You think I should take that, or can you distract Dr. Lia long enough for me to go out the front door?”

 

“You’re seriously asking if you should sneak out the window?”

 

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

 

“Someday I’m going to make you follow up with actual stories.” Clint nodded his head towards the door. “Take the hall. I’ll distract her.”

 


	9. Chapter 9

Coulson was listening to Skye talk about her findings. He hadn’t seen May yet. Well, he had passed her, and she’d muttered, “not right now” before walking past him.

 

Trip came into the room. “Maria Hill is here to see you,” he told Coulson.

 

Coulson patted Skye’s shoulder as he got to his feet. “Good work. Keep it up.”

 

She nodded, glancing at Trip before returning her eyes to her computer screen.

 

“She’s waiting in your office,” Trip said.

 

“Yeah, I need a new office.” When Trip seemed to need clarification, Coulson added. “This one seems to be too easy to find.”

 

“Try the wing next time.”

 

Coulson grinned at that. “I might have to.”

 

Maria looked rough. He’d seen her look rough before, but right now, she had almost died, and she looked every inch of it. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I wanted to let you know before I left,” she said.

 

He nodded. He hadn’t expected her to stay. “Do you need a ride?”

 

She shook her head. She sighed and looked down at her hands. She was dressed so casually that she could have been anyone. She could have walked into a convenience store and just been another person. It’d been a long time since he had seen her like that, and it wasn’t only the clothes. Something about the careful way she held her body made her seem more vulnerable in general. “I need you to keep her away from this.”

 

“I can’t do that.”

 

“It’s dangerous, Coulson.” She looked up. “Are you going to tell her about this conversation?”

 

“Why, does she need level nine clearance?” he asked, but behind the teasing in his tone he could hear his own resentment, and he wondered why that was.

 

She studied him carefully for a moment. “It’s about learning your lesson, Phil. You know the moment you tell her I was here, what I said to you, that she’s only going to be more determined to track down the source of all of this, and whatever happens to her from that point on, it’s going to be on you. Because I warned you.”

 

“No, it’s going to be on you,” he said, walking closer to her. “It’s going to be on you and Fury and your secrets that you keep from the rest of us like you know better than we do. You’re making it very clear there is something you know about this situation, but you still hide behind clearance levels and need to know. Well you fucked that up. You fucked that up because you didn’t know better than everyone else, so maybe you could let the rest of us in on it. Give us a clue about what is going on.”

 

She sighed, and then she looked straight at him. “Tell her then. She already knows I know something. It doesn’t mean I’m going to tell either of you.” She straightened her body, holding herself more like the Maria Hill he knew. It was a message, one about authority, one that said whether he respected that authority or not, she knew that she commanded it. “Look, Coulson, the world still operates on secrets. They might not be S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets anymore. They might be H.Y.D.R.A. secrets or government secrets. They might be your secrets. Whatever secrets they are, the reason everyone doesn’t run around telling the truth like we’re all a bunch of boy scouts is that the truth gets people killed. So you might not forgive me for not being forthcoming, but I know what I can hold on my conscience. You need to start deciding what you can hold on yours.”

 

With that Maria Hill walked out of his office, back straight, and Coulson looked after her. Whatever had happened these few weeks in Indonesia, he knew then that they were going to change everything he had known, again. For once, he wanted to shrug it off, but it was too late for that, whatever decision he made now, too many things had already been set in motion.

 

\---

 

May was making good use of the punching bag when Coulson found her. “That bad?” he asked.

 

She glanced over at him before continuing in silence.

 

“Maria is leaving tomorrow. Apparently Tony is sending a jet.”

 

Another glance, then a snort. “Good for her.” All done between the evenly spaced rhythms of her jabbing the bag.

 

He hesitated, deciding on what he wanted to say before he spoke. “Maybe we should let this one go.”

 

She stopped punching then and turned to him, looking like she wouldn’t mind making him the next punching bag.

 

“This team, May, you, it’s all more important than trying to figure out who did this. If they target us again, that’s fine, but we’d do better to prepare for that then go into a situation we know nothing about.”

 

“The time for saying that was before Singapore,” she said. “So are you going to tell me why?”

 

“I told you, I’m worried about the team’s safety.”

 

“Not that. Back in Singapore. Why you had to send me in.” She crossed her arms and waited.

 

“Because I need to know… whatever happened, whatever is going to happen, potentially, to me and Skye.”

 

“What does that have to do with Singapore?”

 

“What they said they had, I’ve been looking up some things, making a few calls, and I think it’s linked.”

 

“Linked how?”

 

“Same… source of origin.”

 

“As GH-325?”

 

“Yes.”

 

She stared at him for a moment. “You should have told me before.”

 

“I know. I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s not enough,” she said. “So you’re really dropping this?”

 

“What else are we supposed to do? What else do we have the _resources_ to do?”

 

“We’ve done more with less.”

 

“No.” Coulson shook his head. “This is the least we’ve ever had.”

 

She gave him one more shake of the head. “Fine,” she said without looking at him. She took her gloves off and threw them down.

 

He watched her leave. She hadn’t said it, but he knew that it hadn’t been the end of the discussion. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t completely sure if he was doing the right thing either.

 

\---

 

Maria had listened dutifully to the latest round of admonishment from Dr. Lia as she’d repacked all of her belongings back into a small bag. Now she was alone, sitting on the small bed facing the window, waiting for the call to tell her that Tony’s private jet had arrived.

 

A slight sound behind her made her turn, and she saw Melinda in the door, looking in on her with an unreadable expression. “I forgot to say thank you.”

 

“Don’t mention it,” Maria said, turning back. “You’d have been one of many people who only remember me when something goes wrong. When things go right…” She sighed. “Well, that’s just what they expect of me, isn’t it?” Clint was right, maybe the pain pills were making her maudlin, because she could have sworn those weren’t the words she’d meant to say.

 

“Tell me what you know.” It was a request this time. “Whoever did this to me, Maria, they wanted something, and they aren’t going to stop. I know you talked to Coulson.”

 

“So he told you?”

 

“He didn’t have to.” She came so that she was standing in front of the window, her arms crossed. “I know how you operate.”

 

“You used to know me,” Maria said, not looking at her. “You have no idea what I’m capable of now.”

 

“You know what I’m capable of. You know what I’m planning to do, or you wouldn’t have talked to Phil. It’s a matter of time. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

 

“I hope you do,” Maria said, finally settling her eyes on May. “But nothing I know is going to help you do that.” There was a text on her phone. “Well, that’s my ride. The six of you really need to think about what you’re trying to accomplish here. Not just in Singapore, May. In general.” She stood up with her things. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad to see you alive.”

 

May looked her over, probably taking in the bandages and bruises that littered Maria’s body. She knew she had a pretty impressive purple place on her chin. “If you ever get yourself killed for me, I will bring you back so that I can murder you again.”

 

“Be careful. It almost sounds like you care.” One side of Maria’s mouth tilted up into a smile. “But I’ll remember that next time.” She walked out of the room, knowing there was nothing more to say. Maria wanted to get home, to New York. Besides, there were things she needed to take care of.

 

\---

 

Skye’s alarm clock went off right before Trip burst into her private quarters, throwing an old shirt at her. “Get dressed and hurry up.”

 

She muttered after him before tugging on the shirt and some shorts she had. She’d forgotten how nice it was to sleep in, how much she’d resented Ward’s intrusions into her mornings.

 

“When we’re landed, I like to take a morning jog, but seeing as we’re taking off today, we’ll use these.” He tossed her a jump rope. “Cardio is at the heart of every great fighter. Be as strong as you like, if you tire out, your strength isn’t going to do you any good.”

 

“And what if you’re tired from not sleeping?” Skye asked.

 

He grinned at her. “Come on, one set of a hundred jumps. Starting now.”

 

Jump roping was lame, the lamest thing Skye had ever been forced to do as a child, so she had to remind herself why she was doing it now.

 

It was far from the last thing Trip had her do that morning, and by the end she felt like collapsing onto something soft and sleeping until she forgot the way her arms felt like she’d been lifting concrete blocks for hours. She was on her way to a shower when she noticed that Coulson was up, sitting at his desk looking at something. “Hey, AC. What’s up?” she asked, strolling in.

 

“Not much,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep.”

 

“Ah.” Seemed nicer than being forced out of bed by beeping and shouting. “Whatcha looking at?” she asked, trying to peer into his hands.

 

“Nothing much. An old picture.”

 

“Of you and a lady?” she asked suggestively.

 

“Not quite.” He waved the picture back and forth a little. “Thinking about how life is complicated.”

 

“Little late for that, isn’t it?” she asked. “I mean I would have thought you’d worked past those thoughts after being killed by an alien and being brought back from the dead, but what do I know?”

 

“Sometimes, Skye, the most confusing things are the most common.”

 

“Like what part of which animal bologna is made out of?”

 

“Something like that.” He smiled, then frowned at the picture, as if deciding something, he set it face down on the desk. “You look like you’re working hard.”

 

“I am.” She smiled. “I’m going to be… better at this.”

 

“That’s good to hear.”

 

“May… is she going to be all right?” Skye asked, tracing the edge of the desk. “She’s been quiet and stand-offish, even for May.”

 

“Yeah. She will be.” He seemed to make another decision and put the little picture in Skye’s hand. “Would you give this to her for me? Tell her that I know I owe her, and maybe we’ll pursue this thing after all.”

 

“Sure. I can do that.” She hesitated before leaving. “What thing?”

 

“Nothing,” Coulson said. “Only that we’re going to do what we can to find out who kidnapped her. Stop it from happening again.”

 

Skye smiled and nodded and left the room. She looked at the white back of the picture, but she decided that if Coulson hadn’t shown her, maybe it wasn’t any of her business. If she was giving it to May, it was probably one of the ten thousand and one things May wanted to keep private, and Skye was learning to respect that.

 

She went to May’s room, and not finding her there, went to check the rest of the plane. Not finding her around, Skye went to see if she were getting the plane ready to take off. It wouldn’t surprise Skye, the woman had been itching to leave since before she’d gotten out of the clinic.

 

May wasn’t in the cockpit, but on the window was taped a folded piece of paper. “ _Coulson,_ ” it said. “ _Went to follow a lead. You were right, this is something I have to do alone._ ”

 

She took the paper straight to Coulson. “What does she mean this is something she has to do alone?” Skye demanded.

 

Coulson stood up from his desk, frowning, and he took the paper from Skye. “I told her that I was thinking about not pursuing the people who took her, that maybe we didn’t have the resources to do it safely.”

 

“That’s not your decision,” she said. “We risk our lives for each other, and that’s our choice. What gives you the fucking right?” She shoved him in the chest, and he grabbed her hand.

 

“Skye. We’ll find her. We can track her down.”

 

“How are we going to do that?”

 

“There are ways,” he said. “Trust me.”

 

“The problem is,” Skye said. “I don’t. The only reason I’m not going after her by myself right now is because I know that I’d have a better chance with the others.”

 

She left to tell Fitz and Simmons about the note, but she stopped when she realized the edges of the picture were still digging into her palm. Skye changed directions, towards May’s room, unable to resist turning it over, as if it could tell her something about where May had gone.

 

It didn’t. Instead it explained something else to her. Skye had thought it weird that anyone had shown up to rescue May. She’d thought it was about S.H.I.E.L.D., but part of her had known that hadn’t made any sense either.

 

She sensed Trip behind her without looking back. “You said it was more than coworkers,” she said, moving the little picture so that he could see it. There was May, a younger May, her arm around a much younger Maria Hill. “I didn’t even know she could smile like that,” Skye said. “It reaches her eyes. She actually looks happy instead of frowny and serious.”

 

Trip took the photo from her.

 

“I have a feeling that whoever the woman was in this photo, she’s not the one you know,” Trip told her. “Where did you get this?”

 

“Coulson.”

 

Trip nodded.

 

“So did you think they were just close friends or?”

 

“When you care about someone like that,” Trip said. “You’re obviously more than friends, whether you’re fucking that person or not.” He put a hand on her shoulder and handed the picture back. “Coulson sent me to find you. He’s gotten Fitz and Simmons together. We’re going to go find her.”

 

Skye nodded, putting the picture down on May’s bed.

 

\---

 

Maria was back in New York, looking at a similar picture as she drank a glass of brandy and waited for Tony Stark on his couch. Her body was still sore in ways that made it difficult to move much, nothing that the flight across the Pacific had helped. It had been at least a day since she’d bathed or changed clothes, choosing to come straight here instead of going home.

 

She was taking the risk that Pepper wouldn’t find her first, but Pepper usually spent the mornings before Tony got up on an elliptical, and Tony usually used that time to come in and check the Google alerts he had on himself.

 

Sure enough as the last of sun was emerging from the skyline, Tony came into the room and stopped. “You know Stark Towers isn’t your home, and you don’t live here, right?” he asked.

 

“You were the one who chose to employ me.”

 

“It was a favor to Pepper. Had no choice, really. She does run this place.” He sat next to her and eyed the glass before eyeing the bruise on her chin. “Rough camping trip?”

 

“Something like that,” she agreed. Maria put the glass down.

 

“Exes do that to you,” he said. “So saving her, does that make you the cavalry to the Cavalry?”

 

She didn’t want to know how he knew. “Don’t call her that.”

 

“It is what people call her, right?”

 

“Yes, but…” Maria took a deep breath. “Don’t.”

 

“Okay.” He leaned back. “You know, now that I think of it, I’d rather take on a fleet of aliens descending upon New York than my exes.”

 

Maria snorted. “That probably has to do with the number of them.”

 

“In my defense, I was young. And rich. And good looking. Not my fault.” He got up to fill her glass. “Everything turn out okay?”

 

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

 

“You look a little bit like a guy I saw once who’d fallen off a five story building, but you’re right. You are here. Is there a reason you’re here?”

 

“I have some business I need to take care of,” she said. “I’m going to need some more time off. Going to need to contact a few people, and then I’m going to need to take a few weeks.”

 

“I’m not sure how much more camping the American government is going to let you do,” he said. “Do you know how many senators I had to bribe the first time?” At her skeptical look, he amended, “Well, it was only one, but I doubt one is going to do it this time. How important is it?”

 

“If it’s what I think it is, then what happened with H.Y.D.R.A.? It’s going to look like child’s play, Tony.”

 

“Don’t suppose you’re going to let me in on what it is,” he said. “What is my security clearance again? Level five? Don’t you think I should at least get a seven for saving the planet?”

 

“S.H.I.E.L.D. is not the reason I’m not telling you the information. Don’t get me wrong, it’s classified, but…” She shrugged. “People are right. What does classified even mean anymore? This is… my responsibility, and I’m going to take care of it. The less people who know, the better.”

 

“Do I at least get a souvenir this time?” he asked. “I like things that flash or those little bobble head figures. ‘You are here’ t-shirts. Which reminds me, where are you going?”

 

“Nice try.” Maria got up and patted his arm. “Try not to mention the bruises to Pepper.”

 

“It’s not going to matter if she sees you,” he said.

 

“Won’t have time. I’m heading out this morning. I’ll need the jet on Thursday.”

 

“You better be glad that Pepper likes you. I never let people ask me for this many favors.”

 

“We both know _you’re_ the one that should be glad that Pepper likes you.”

 

“I know. Don’t know how she manages.” He put a hand on her arm. “Maria, despite everything, I don’t want to see you die. So don’t die, okay?”

 

“I don’t plan on it.”

 

“It’s not usually something you plan.” He removed his hand from her arm. “You know I’m no good at comforting Pepper.” He gave her a strained smile. “I better go check my Google alerts. See what they’re writing about me today.”

 

It was his way of dismissing her, and Maria got to her feet.

 

 _Project Gateway_. The two words she’d hoped would never come back to haunt her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued in The Ghost and the Darkness, Part 2: The End and the Beginning


End file.
